Monday Conversations by Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve
"Monday Conversations" (Causeries du Lundi) is a series of essays by the French literary critic and poet Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, published from 1851 until shortly after his death in 1870. This collection represents Sainte-Beuve's critical method, which emphasizes exhaustive analysis of literary works while intertwining the author’s life and experiences with their creations. Often regarded as a key figure in the evolution of literary criticism in the mid-nineteenth century, Sainte-Beuve's approach contrasts with that of his predecessor Boileau, as he sought to understand literature through the lens of the author's personal context rather than through classical criteria. Although he is sometimes criticized for overlooking the works of several contemporaries, Sainte-Beuve recognized the significance of past literary figures that had been neglected, such as Ronsard.
He aimed to create literary biographies that reveal the moral and intellectual facets of authors, underscoring his belief in the inseparability of an author from their works. Sainte-Beuve's writing style is notable for its artistry, employing effective epigrams and metaphors that convey both an appreciation for literature and a rich understanding of its complexities. Through "Monday Conversations," readers can engage with a nuanced perspective on literature, informed by the intellectual currents of Positivism prevalent in his time, while also encountering the beauty of his prose. This series remains a significant contribution to literary criticism and a reflection of the dynamic cultural landscape of 19th-century France.
On this Page
Monday Conversations by Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve
First published:Monday Conversations, 1851-1862; New Mondays, 1863-1870; First Mondays, 1875
Type of work: Literary criticism
Critical Evaluation:
Just as Boileau was the model man of letters and literary critic of the French seventeenth century, so, in several ways, was Sainte-Beuve the model professional literary man of the nineteenth century in France. However, Sainte-Beuve, though he was a doctrinaire Romantic in much of his early work, cannot be so thoroughly identified with Romanticism as can Boileau with French Classicism. But Romanticism never took so firm and characteristic a hold in France as had Classicism, and it is probably accurate to say that Sainte-Beuve typifies the French literary world of the mid-nineteenth century. This view holds despite the fact that he is notorious for not being able to evaluate correctly many of his great contemporaries; Stendhal, Balzac, and Baudelaire were among the authors to whom Sainte-Beuve was blind. In this respect Sainte-Beuve was the opposite of Boileau, whose ability to identify the greatness of his contemporaries was remarkable. Sainte-Beuve’s strength lay in seeing the excellence of the literature of the past, and he was among the first to detect that Ronsard, who had been ignored for two hundred years, was a major figure in the French literary tradition. In this respect, too, he was the opposite of Boileau whose snobbish Classicism made him blind to the excellence of much of the literature of the Renaissance and the Middle Ages. This contrast between Boileau and Sainte-Beuve is instructive: it illustrates the strengths of Classicism and Romanticism and shows us that the “perfect” literary consciousness will combine the characteristics of both.
In the nineteenth century, literary criticism, like other intellectual activities, more and more abandoned the humanistic traditions of the Renaissance as it sought to model itself on that great child and successor of humanism, modern science. The philosophy behind this new attitude was Positivism. It was assumed by Positivists that mankind had passed through the theological way of thinking, to an abstract and metaphysical method of thought, typified by non-religious philosophic systems, to the ultimate way of thinking: the positive way, based on positive, objective science. All things, physical reality, society, man himself, and literature, if examined scientifically could be known and understood completely and truly.
Adopting this theory to his own particular talents and interests, Sainte-Beuve developed a characteristic method of criticism which is seen at its best in his MONDAY CONVERSATIONS (CAUSERIES DU LUNDI), a series of essays published in three Paris newspapers on successive Mondays from 1851 until just after his death in 1870. (Actually, these essays fall into three separate groups: MONDAY CONVERSATIONS, a second series called NEW MONDAYS, and a posthumously gathered series of earlier essays titled FIRST MONDAYS.)
The basis of Sainte-Beuve’s critical method was exhaustive analysis of the work in question. Thus, just as he rejected the classical criticism of the seventeenth century which had found its basis in the writings of Aristotle and Horace, he also rejected the newer school of eighteenth century impressionistic criticism (which had in fact blended with classical criticism) that had found its theoretical basis in that greatest of impressionistic critics, Longinus. For Sainte-Beuve the literary work was not to be judged and examined in terms of a set of criteria external to the work, but by reference to the work itself. To accomplish this end, however, Sainte-Beuve indulged himself in a technique which we no longer find enlightening. That is, he focused on the author in the belief that a study of the author and a study of the work were inseparable and, in fact, amounted to the same thing. As Sainte-Beuve said, he wanted “to examine and question the individual talent [as it was reflected in the work] in terms of its education, its culture, its life, and its genesis.” His approach to an author was, in his words, “to lay siege” to him. He wanted to catch the author, as it were, in the very act of creation, and he wanted to reveal his every intellectual and moral facet. His goal, as he said, was to write a “natural history” of literary talents.
Using this method, Sainte-Beuve constructed literary portraits. Several of his series of critical essays actually bore the word “portrait” in their titles; and all of his criticism could have borne that title. In this method we see the ultimate weakness of his work, great as it is. As the important French literary historian Gustave Lanson said, Sainte-Beuve made biography the basis of criticism so that, instead of explaining the work in biographical terms, he reconstructed a biography from the work itself. This observation is valid even for Sainte-Beuve’s fine historical study of the Jansenist Abbey of Port-Royal, the intellectual nursery and school of Racine, Pascal, and many other important figures of the seventeenth century. In his multi-volume history of PORT-ROYAL, which he published between 1840 and 1860, Sainte-Beuve wanted to treat the Abbey as a “unique individual of whom I am writing a biography.”
This method of Sainte-Beuve was not a “system.” That is, he did not approach a work with any one idea or set of criteria he was determined to use, or any one technique of analysis. He spent much effort in his earlier years trying to find a formula or school that would satisfy him and which would help him organize (that is, bias) his observations. But sooner or later he rejected all “isms”—consciously at least. That he was a child of his time, and that he reflected the Positivistic intellectual assumptions of the era, goes without saying. Consciously, Sainte-Beuve was an enemy to all kinds of dogmatism and, his unfortunate critical judgments of some of his contemporaries notwithstanding, he showed himself able to deal sympathetically with all kinds of writing.
In his early years, for example, as a mediocre poet and novelist, and as a budding young and brilliant critic, he fell under the influence of Victor Hugo and then Chateaubriand. He was an avowed Romantic and frequently praised writers whom he judged were helping to rejuvenate and to rescue literature from the deadness of Classicism. He was one of the first Frenchmen to appreciate the fantasies of E.T.A. Hoffmann—who, Sainte-Beuve claimed, had opened unexplored areas of literary experience for future writers. As he grew older, however, particularly during the period when he was writing his MONDAY CONVERSATIONS, he abandoned many of his former Romantic enthusiasms, and more and more came to value the clarity and simplicity and reasonableness of Classical writing. For this reason he was able to appreciate and reinterpret great Classicists like Moliere and La Fontaine for a century that had begun by rejecting these masters.
But it is not what Sainte-Beuve said in his MONDAY CONVERSATIONS and his other critical works that still attracts us; it is just as much how he says it. Each of his essays is a work of art in itself. In many ways, Sainte-Beuve is as fine a writer as any of those he examines. His style is characterized by exquisitely effective epigrams and metaphors; he charms his readers and reveals to them all the nuances and delicacy of his subtle mind. He translates into concrete terms and communicates to his audience his own pleasure with great works of literature and the intimacy with them and their authors that his method allows him to achieve. In this respect Sainte-Beuve may be characterized as an epicurean of literature.