ABSTRACT
Corinne, the female genius protagonist o f Madame de Staël’s K ünstlerinroman, Corinne ou L ’Italie (1807) is asked early in the novel which o f her poetry she prefers: ‘those which are the work of reflection or o f instantaneous inspiration?’1 The language which Corinne makes recourse to in her response is precisely the modem language o f the aesthetic discourse o f her age.2 Here we have an ItalianEnglish heroine in a book written in French, promulgating German philosophical aesthetics for the understanding and appreciation o f the arts. The occasion for her reflections is an informal ‘interview’ by her friends and admirers during a social soiree at her house, which in the novel is a meeting place for enthusiasts o f the arts and for Italian patriots. These digressions where Corinne engages in short speeches and discussions on art, aesthetics, poetics, culture and politics are indeed the rule informing the novel. Corinne concludes her lengthy consideration with the following observation:
Enfin je me sens poëte, non pas seulement quand un heureux choix de rimes ou de syllabes harimonieuses, quand une heureuse réunion d’images éblouit des auditeurs, mais quand mon âme s’éiève, quand elle dédaigne de plus haut 1’egoïsme et la bassesse, enfin quand une belle action me serait plus facile: c’est alors que mes vers sont meilleurs. Je suis poëte lorsque j ’admire, lorsque je méprise, lorsque je hais, non par des sentiments personnels, non pour ma propre cause, mais pour la dignité de 1’espèce humaine et la gloire du monde.3 [Finally, I feel I am a poet, not only when a felicitous choice of harmonious rhymes or syllables, when a felicitous reunion of images dazzles the listeners, but when my soul is uplifted, when it disdains from the highest
1 Madame Germaine Necker de Staël, Corinne ou L'ltalie (Paris: Edition Gallimard, 1985), p. 84.
