Etienne de Senancour
Étienne de Senancour (1770-1846) was a French author best known for his epistolary novel, *Oberman*, published in 1804, which gained posthumous recognition in the 1820s. His early life in Paris was marked by loneliness and social misfit tendencies, compounded by familial pressures to join the clergy. After a brief marriage and personal turmoil, including a love affair with a married woman, Senancour turned to writing, producing several works that reflect the emerging Romantic movement and echo the thoughts of philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His novel *Oberman* incorporates autobiographical elements and explores deep philosophical themes, though it initially went unnoticed. Despite his struggles with poverty and obscurity for many years, Senancour eventually found a following among literary figures like Honoré de Balzac and George Sand. In his later years, he faced significant health challenges, dying alone in a shelter for the elderly. Senancour's literature remains a significant yet often overlooked part of French Romanticism, underscoring the complexities of human emotion and social critique.
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Etienne de Senancour
Author
- Born: November 16, 1770
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Died: January 10, 1846
Biography
If Etienne de Senancour is known at all to English-speaking readers, he is remembered for his epistolary novel, Oberman (1804), which A. E. Waite translated from the original French as Obermann (1893). Senancour produced a number of other books, including the novel Isabelle, presumably written around 1815 but not published until 1833. His other books have not been translated into English.
Senancour’s parents were in their forties when their only child was born in Paris in 1770. As a young man, Senancour was lonely and unhappy, something of a social misfit who lost himself in reading and mused about his future during frequent solitary walks in the country. His father, who wanted to be a clergyman but had not fulfilled his ambition, put considerable pressure on his son to enter the clergy. In 1789, his father insisted that Senancour enter the Saint-Suplice Seminary.
At this point, Senancour made a precipitous departure from Paris. He fantasized about going to exotic places but lacking the funds to do so, he went instead to Switzerland, where he hiked in the Alps before settling in Fribourg. Here he met a Swiss woman who quickly became pregnant. Senancour succumbed to her parents’ demands to marry her, although he did not love her.
Within two years, now married and the father of two children, Senancour returned to Paris alone to rebuild his fractured relationship with his parents. Back in Paris, he fell in love with a married woman, Marie Walckenaer, but apparently their relationship was never consummated. Her elderly husband, nevertheless, challenged Senancour to a duel that was called off before anyone was hurt.
Senancour’s first introduction to Parisian high life came when he served as the tutor to Sophie Houdetot’s grandchildren. This employment was interrupted when he was urgently recalled to Fribourg by his wife’s parents because their daughter had just given birth to a son. Senancour, having been absent for more than a year, clearly was not the father, and his marriage soon collapsed.
In 1799, Senancour’s book, Rêveries sur la nature primitive de l’homme, sur ses sensations, sur les moyens de bonheur qu’elles lui indiquent, sur le mode social qui conserverait le plus de ses formes primordiales, which examined the nature of man, was well received and evoked the spirit of Romanticism that was beginning to grow as a literary movement. Much of his writing is suggestive of the work of philosopher and writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Senancour relates many autobiographical incidents in his novel Oberman. The book essentially was ignored when it was published in 1804. Its author lived in poverty and obscurity for the next twenty years, publishing mostly social critiques. By the mid 1820’s, however, Oberman had attracted the attention of such notables as Honoré de Balzac, George Sand, Franz Liszt, and Stendhal. Before long, the novel gained a cult following and Senancour, now in his fifties, received the kind of recognition he had never experienced previously. He was finally able to publish his only other novel, Isabelle, which he had written earlier.
In old age, Senancour was deaf and paralyzed, unable even to feed himself. He died alone in a shelter for the elderly on January 10, 1846, at the age of seventy-five.