Memoirs from Beyond the Grave: 1815-1830 - by François-Réne Chateaubriand (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The third part of the epic autobiography of Chateaubriand, the aristocratic Frenchman who lived through the beginning of the French Revolution and who would become the founder of the Romantic movement in Europe, now in a new, unabridged English translation--the first in a century.

In 1815--with the Napoleonic era at an end and royalty restored--François-René de Chateaubriand seemed poised, along with the Bourbon family he'd long supported, to wield unprecedented power. Already one of France's most celebrated writers, he now became an ambassador and statesman of the French kingdom. Yet as passionate about royalty as Chateaubriand was in principle, in reality he was a recalcitrant subject. A defender of the constitution and of freedom of the press, he quarreled constantly with Louis XVIII and Charles X and eventually tendered his resignation--just in time for the July Revolution, which put an end to Bourbon rule and allowed Chateaubriand to go back to praising the family, now safely exiled to the realm of the ideal.
In the third volume of Alex Andriesse's new translation of Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, Chateaubriand writes about international politics, a papal conclave, and the revolutionary strife of 1830 with undiminished flair. And he remains one of the great masters--perhaps unequaled in this--of literary digression. Readers will gladly accompany him on walks around Paris and Rome, as he reflects on storms and ruins, moonlight and mortality.

Review Quotes

Praise for Alex Andriesses' translations of the first two parts of Memoirs from Beyond the Grave and the memoir in general:

"I am moved by Chateaubriand's dignified lucidity, which always led him to tell the truth, no matter what. He was often disillusioned but always lucid and avid to describe things as they were, which is why he was, more than a politician, a writer who preserved a code of ethics. And thus a writer for our times." --Roland Barthes

"As fresh as ever. . . . [Memoirs from Beyond the Grave 1768-1800 and Memoirs from Beyond the Grave 1800-1815] speak as much to our times as they did to the nineteenth century." --David Platzer, The New Criterion

"Chateaubriand's self-appointed calling was as court historian who held his subject in contempt, ensuring that the truth would out about the monsters who rule the world for a spell. His eloquence won the regard even of his sworn enemy. . . . May he find comparable honor in our time and our place." --Algis Valiunas, National Review

"The best autobiography ever written . . . . The old viscount could write one hell of a sentence. It's an incredible book." --Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

"What distinguishes [Memoirs from Beyond the Grave]...is less its historical overview of the turbulence that preceded Napoleon's rise to power than Chateaubriand's examination of his own character and feelings amid multiple setbacks. Indeed, it is the lyricism and intimacy of his language, convincingly translated here by Alex Andriesse, that made Chateaubriand a precursor of French Romanticism." --Alan Riding, The New York Times Book Review

"Alex Andriesse's fine unabridged translation--which deftly wrangles Chateaubriand's personal canon of Greek and Latin classics, Breton proverbs, Jewish scripture, Catholic hymns and medieval laid--is the first into English in more than a century. What...does Chateaubriand have to offer the contemporary reader? Beyond the sumptuous language and aphoristic compression, it is his ability to engage with, and even surmount, contradiction that proves most resonant. His elastic prose...leaps easily between burnished romanticism and more classical forms...It makes for immensely satisfying reading." --Dustin Illingworth, TLS

"Alex Andriesse has done a wonderful job suggesting the range of tone and feeling Chateaubriand offers, he shifts from the ecstatic to the dry, from the descriptive to the cryptic...The echoes of Chateaubriand in so much existentialist literature of the 20th century suggest that for all his difficulty finding congenial company among his contemporaries, in a longer perspective he becomes a figure we can all be intimate with." --Tim Parks, London Review of Books

"This memoir, ably translated by Andriesse with an introduction from historian Anka Muhlstein, reveals to English-speaking readers the famously aphoristic and flamboyant style that other French writers, including Baudelaire and Proust, admired and sought to emulate." --Publishers Weekly

"Chateaubriand's Memoirs...are his Arc de Triomphe, and may yet prove more lasting than their equivalent in stone." --Adam Kirsch

"To read Chateaubriand is to witness the subjective and yet comprehensive unfolding of a society's change: of customs, prospects, ethics, conventions. He stands (as in the famous portrait by Girodet) on the farther shore." --Alberto Manguel

"The Memoirs from Beyond the Grave [...] encapsulate and bring to perfect mastery all the linguistic registers that their author had by turns attempted: epic, tragic, elegiac, lyric, oratorical, narrative, descriptive--like an evening rainbow over a Venetian lagoon." --Marc Fumaroli

"A Romantic classic." --BBC News, Paris

About the Author

François-René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848) was born in Saint-Malo, on the northern coast of Brittany, the youngest son of an aristocratic family. Long recognized as one of the first French Romantics, Chateaubriand was also a historian, diplomat, and staunch defender of the freedom of the press. He is best remembered for his posthumously published Memoirs from Beyond the Grave.

Alex Andriesse is an editor at New York Review Books. He has translated, in addition to three volumes of Memoirs from Beyond the Grave (a final volume is forthcoming from NYRB Classics), Cristina Campo's The Unforgivable and Other Writings, Jacques Dupin's Notched, and Jean-Pierre Martinet's With Their Hearts in Their Boots.