He was born inBoulogne, educated there, and studied medicine at theCollège Charlemagne in Paris (1824–27). In 1828, he served in the St Louis Hospital. Beginning in 1824, he contributed literary articles, thePremier lundis of his collectedWorks, to the newspaperGlobe, and in 1827 he came, by a review ofVictor Hugo'sOdes et Ballades,[1] into close association with Hugo and theCénacle, the literary circle that strove to define the ideas of the risingRomanticism and struggle against classicalformalism. Sainte-Beuve became friendly with Hugo after publishing a favourable review of the author's work but later had an affair with Hugo's wife,Adèle Foucher, which resulted in their estrangement. Curiously, when Sainte-Beuve was made a member of theFrench Academy in 1845, the ceremonial duty of giving the reception speech fell upon Hugo.
Sainte-Beuve published collections of poems and the partlyautobiographical novelVolupté in 1834. His articles and essays were collected the volumesPort-Royal andPortraits littéraires.
Commemorative plaque, 11 Rue du Montparnasse, Paris
During therebellions of 1848 in Europe, he lectured atLiège onChateaubriand and his literary circle. He returned toParis in 1849 and began his series of topical columns,Causeries du lundi ('Monday Chats') in the newspaper,Le Constitutionnel. WhenLouis Napoleon became Emperor, he made Sainte-Beuve professor ofLatin poetry at theCollège de France, but anti-Imperialist students hissed him, and he resigned.[1]
After several books of poetry and a couple of failed novels, Sainte-Beuve began to do literary research, of which the most important publication resulting isPort-Royal. He continued to contribute toLa Revue contemporaine.
Port-Royal (1837–1859), probably Sainte-Beuve's masterpiece, is an exhaustive history of theJansenist abbey ofPort-Royal-des-Champs, near Paris. It not only influenced the historiography ofreligious belief, i.e., the method of such research, but also thephilosophy of history and the history ofesthetics.
He was made Senator in 1865, in which capacity he distinguished himself by his pleas forfreedom of speech and of the press. According toJules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly, "Sainte-Beuve was a clever man with the temper of a turkey!" In his last years, he was an acute sufferer and lived much in retirement.
One of Sainte-Beuve's critical contentions was that, in order to understand an artist and his work, it was necessary to understand that artist's biography.Marcel Proust took issue with this notion and repudiated it in a set of essays,Contre Sainte-Beuve ("Against Sainte-Beuve"). Proust developed the ideas first voiced in those essays inÀ la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time).
In 1880Friedrich Nietzsche, though an avowed opponent of Sainte-Beuve, prompted the wife of his friendFranz Overbeck, Ida Overbeck, to translate theCauseries du lundi into German. Until then, Sainte-Beuve was never published in German despite his great importance in France, since it was considered representative of a French way of thinking detested in Germany. Ida Overbeck's translation appeared in 1880 under the titleDie Menschen des XVIII. Jahrhunderts (Men of the 18th Century). Nietzsche wrote to Ida Overbeck on August 18, 1880: "An hour ago I received theDie Menschen des XVIII. Jahrhunderts, [...] It is just a marvellous book. I think I've cried." Ida Overbeck's translation is an important document of the cultural transfer between Germany and France in a period of strong tension, but it was largely ignored. It was not until 2014 that a critical and annotated edition of this translation appeared in print.[2]
^Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve: Menschen des XVIII. Jahrhunderts. Übersetzt von Ida Overbeck, initiiert von Friedrich Nietzsche. Mit frisch entdeckten Aufzeichnungen von Ida Overbeck neu ediert vonAndreas Urs Sommer. 423 pp. Berlin: Die Andere Bibliothek, 2014.ISBN978-3-8477-0355-6
