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Étienne-Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Ignace Pivert de Senancour (French pronunciation:[etjɛnpivɛʁdəsənɑ̃kuʁ]; 16 November 1770, inParis – 10 January 1846, inSaint-Cloud) was a Frenchessayist andphilosopher, remembered primarily for hisepistolary novelObermann.
Much of Senancour's childhood was spent in a state of ill-health. He began his education with acuré in the vicinity ofErmenonville before being sent to theCollège de la Marche. His father, Claude-Laurent Pivert, aContrôleur des Rentes andConseil du Roi, wanted him to enter the seminary ofSaint-Sulpice to become apriest. To avoid a profession for which he had no vocation, Senancour, with the help of his mother, fled to Switzerland in 1789. On 11 September 1790, he married Marie-Françoise Daguet with whom he had two children: a daughterEulalie (1791) who would later follow in her father's footsteps and become a writer, and a son, Florian-Julien (1793), who went on to pursue a career in the military.[citation needed] The marriage was not a happy one; his wife refused to accompany him to the Alpine solitude he desired, and they settled inFribourg.[1]
His absence from France at the outbreak of theRevolution was interpreted as hostility to the new government, and his name was included in the list ofémigrés. He visited France from time to time by stealth, but he only succeeded in saving the remnants of a considerable fortune. In 1799 he published in Paris hisRêveries sur la nature primitive de l'homme, a book containing impassioned descriptive passages which mark him out as a precursor of theromantic movement. His parents and his wife died before the close of the century, and Senancour was in Paris in 1801 when he beganObermann, which was finished in Switzerland two years later, and printed in 1804. This singular book, which has never lost its popularity with a limited class of readers, was followed in the next year by a treatiseDe l'amour, in which he attacked the accepted social conventions.[1] During this period, he worked at the magazineMercure de France where he made the acquaintance ofLouis-Sébastien Mercier andCharles Nodier.
Senancour might have spent his life writing in complete obscurity were it not for a charge leveled against him by a public prosecutor for slandering religion in the second edition of hisRésumé de l'histoire des traditions morales et religieuses (1827) wherein he describedJesus as a "youthful sage". He was initially found guilty and sentenced to nine months in prison and fined 300 francs, but the penalties were dropped on appeal. Attention to the case from the liberal press increased Senancour's standing, and many of his works were rediscovered and republished. The author revised and expandedObermann for the 1833 edition.
Obermann, which is to a great extent inspired byRousseau, was edited and praised successively bySainte-Beuve and byGeorge Sand, and had a considerable influence both in France and England. It is a series of letters supposed to be written by asolitary andmelancholy person, whose headquarters are placed in a lonely valley of theJura. The idiosyncrasy of the book in the large class ofWertherian-Byronic literature consists in the fact that the hero, instead of feeling the vanity of things, recognizes his own inability to be and do what he wishes. Danish literary criticGeorg Brandes pointed out that whileChateaubriand'snovellaRené was appreciated by some of the ruling spirits of the century,Obermann was understood only by the highly gifted, sensitive temperaments, usually strangers to success.[1]
Senancour was tinged to some extent with the olderphilosophe form offree-thinking, and had no sympathy with theCatholic reaction. Having no resources but his pen, Senancour was driven to hack-work during the period which elapsed between his return to France (1803) and his death at Saint-Cloud; but some of the charm ofObermann is to be found in theLibres Méditations d'un solitaire inconnu.Thiers andVillemain successively obtained for Senancour fromLouis Philippe pensions which enabled him to pass his last days in comfort. Senancour also authored the comedic dramaValombré (1807), and late in life wrote a second novel in letters entitledIsabelle (1833). He composed his own epitaph, "Eternité, sois mon asile".[1]
Senancour is immortalized for English readers in two poems byMatthew Arnold entitledStanzas in Memory of the Author of Obermann andObermann Once More.
Obermann has been translated into English three times: in its entirety byA. E. Waite (1903) and J. Anthony Barnes (1910), and in selections by Jessie Peabody Frothingham (1901).[2]
Between 1848 and 1854,Franz Liszt composedVallée d'Obermann, one of the pieces for piano of the suitePremière année: Suisse, from the œuvreAnnées de pèlerinage, inspired by Senancour's most famous novel.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Senancour, Étienne Pivert de".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 634.
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