Difference between revisions of "Marie d'Agoult" - New World Encyclopedia
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==Her friendship with George Sand== | ==Her friendship with George Sand== | ||
| − | Marie was encouraged to write through her friendship with | + | During her frequent travels in Switzerland, France and Italy she made the acquaintance of George Sand, and she figures in the ''Lettres d'un voyageur'' as "Arabella." Marie was encouraged to write through her friendship with George and eventually took the pen name, ''Daniel Stern''. George Sand eventually betrayed Marie by revealing Marie's breach with Liszt — under a very slight disguise — in George's novel ''Nélida'' (1845). George was competitive, sometimes jealous and challenged society's norms by wearing men's clothing, and even smoking in public. George's betrayal hurt Marie greatly, but from this pain she began to rely on her own self in furthering her writing. |
==Works== | ==Works== | ||
Revision as of 16:01, 23 June 2008
Marie Catherine Sophie de Flavigny, Vicomtesse de Flavigny (December 31, 1805 - March 5, 1876), was a French author, known also by her married name and title, Marie, Comtesse d'Agoult, and by her pen name, Daniel Stern.
She married Charles Louis Constant d’Agoult, Comte d'Agoult (1790-1875) thereby becoming the Comtesse d'Agoult. They had two daughters, Louise (1828-1834), and Claire (1830-1912). They were divorced on August 19, 1835.
From 1835 to 1839 she lived with virtuoso pianist and composer Franz Liszt, who was five years younger, and was a rising concert star. D'Agoult had three children with Liszt, but they did not marry, maintaining their independent views and other differences, while Liszt was busy composing and touring throughout Europe.
Their children were Blandine (1835-1862), who was the first wife of Émile Olivier but died at the age of 28; Cosima (1837-1930) (who married Richard Wagner, the composer, the second marriage for them both); and Daniel (1839-1859), who was already a promising pianist and gifted scholar when he died of tuberculosis at age 20. Chopin dedicated his second set of piano études to Marie d'Agoult.
She died in Paris, and was buried in Division 54 of Père Lachaise Cemetery.
Her life
She was born in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, the daughter of Alexander Victor François de Flavigny (1770-1819), a footloose emigré French aristocrat, and his wife Maria-Elisabeth Bethmann (1772-1847), a Jewish German banker's daughter whose family had converted to Catholicism. The young Marie spent her early years in Germany and completed her education in a French convent after the Bourbon Restoration. She entered into an early marriage of convenience with Charles Louis Constant d’Agoult, Comte d'Agoult (1790-1875) on May 16, 1827, thereby becoming the Comtesse d'Agoult. They had two daughters, Louise (1828-1834), (whose early death devastated Marie), and Claire (1830-1912).
Marie d'Agoult was raised in an aristocratic culture during the period just prior to the French Revolution. This was a time when society began to shift, especially concerning the rights of women. Mary Wollstonecraft wrote the Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792, which stimulated many women, including Marie, to reconsider the life she was living.
Previously, philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau had written that women were notably different creatures than men and should be educated for only one job, marriage and motherhood, where the husband was absolute ruler over his family. After the French Revolution, these paternalistic ideas again gained prominence. The emancipation of women, especially those of Marie's social class, would have to begin with maternal and property rights.
She was not happy in her arranged marriage, but she found spiritual and intellectual sustenance in the religious teachings of the Abbé de Lammenais and in the company of a new generation of Romantic artists like Hugo, Vigny, Lamartine, Chopin, and Rossini, among others. She began to study different topics of interest including art, philosophy, and politics. Marie began to examine the writings of the thinkers of this period and thus developed a critical mind and opinions about various topics. Through her self-education she became a respected critical thinker among her friends.
Franz Liszt, the great love of her life
Marie met Hungarian Franz Liszt, five years younger, in 1833 in Paris. He was an upcoming composer and musician, yet a man below her social standing. Their friendship developed based on books that they shared and discussed together beginning with the Bible, Shakespeare, Goethe, Chateaubriand, Balzac, Nerval and George Sand. She shared her newest interests with him: Volupté, by Sainte-Beuve and Oberman, by Senancour.
While Liszt was somewhat uncultured and not as intellectual, Marie tried to educate him and they shared exciting discussions which brought them closer together. They exchanged many letters over the time of their relationship.
Liszt, actually, was an Utopian, who studied the Sainte-Simonian socialist thinkers, which he introduced to Marie. She was unaware of the great physical misery experienced by the common people who lived outside of her limited aristocratic world. She was moved by the force, clear thoughts and justice taught by Eugene Rodriguez, and Pierre Leroux. In this area Liszt became her teacher and through this exchange of ideas, Marie's intellectual horizons expanded. Liszt's egalitarian views fed Marie's romanticism and they fell in love.
Liszt believed that, "The artist is the living expression of God, of nature, and of humanity." Through art, one could experience God. Marie, longed for fulfillment through love and Liszt began to become the object of her passions and thoughts.
In the spring of 1833, Marie's family moved to Croissy and could not see Liszt. Only their letters kept their relationship alive. The emotions expressed in their letters were high hope and passion and deepest despair. They longed to be together yet were blocked by her marriage and social standing.
She wrote to him,
...whatever my future sufferings you need not cry over them, because you have done me more good than you can ever do me harm. You have managed to break all the lines that still attach me to the world [of high society], and you have awakened in me by the feelings of my own personal unhappiness, which I was offering ceaselessly to God as a sacrifice, believing that resignation was the only virtue possible for me.
She feared never seeing him again, and later wrote, "I am alone, alone with one great thought, and that thought is you. I love you with all my heart." In the autumn of 1834 her family returned to Paris and they became lovers.
Later she wrote, "The need for exclusiveness, this need to be loved totally, has dominated all the feelings of my life."[2] Marie struggled with keeping their affair secret. She was haunted by melancholy and even madness, with worry about the scandal their affair would cause to her family and society. Liszt, a free thinker, told her that up till now she had been keeping secret all the passions and ideas that were "pure" withing herself and that it was a decision between herself and God as to eloping, taking holy orders (to calm their passions) or staying with her husband.
Liszt wrote to her in response to her question about past affairs, "don't you know that you have the right of life and death over me...for you alone I feel myself young and a man." And in another letter he wrote, "Marie, place your hand on my heart, your heart on my breast. I am naked and cold, clothe me entirely with your love , make me burn again with infinite ardor, deliver me for a time from the miseries of the age, resurrect my soul."[3]
Their love relationship developed into greater intensity and in August, 1835 her husband granted her a divorce. He remained on friendly terms with her afterwards.
Marie took the gigantic step of living with Franz Liszt cutting herself off from her family and social connections. She was shunned by her family and the source of much gossip from the aristocratic circles she had been accustomed to.
Her career as a writer
Marie's articulate, intellectual discussions with friends and acquaintances created an environment where her thoughts and ideas developed into powerful arguments. Her friend and admirer, Thèophile de Ferriere encouraged her to write. (Originally wanting to be close to her he later devoted himself to supporting their couple, he even arranged for Liszt to play the organ in Notre Dame at midnight and Marie, dressed in man's clothing, attended. When word got out about the event the public talked about the scandal for months.) He challenged her about her lack of confidence and pushed her to write. She had been inspired by another woman writer, George Sand, or Amandine Dupin, Baronne Dudevant, who wrote Lélia, about a woman demanding the right to fulfillment in marriage. She eventually became friends with Amandine, when George lived with Frédéric Chopin.
Marie became a frequent contributor to the French liberal opposition press of the 1840s. Her three volume, Histoire de la Révolution de 1848, written under her pen name, Daniel Stern, was her best-known work, and is still considered by many historians to be a balanced and accurate contemporary treatment of events in France
Currently, with the advent of feminist studies, she is remembered as being among the most notable French intellectuals of her day.
Her friendship with George Sand
During her frequent travels in Switzerland, France and Italy she made the acquaintance of George Sand, and she figures in the Lettres d'un voyageur as "Arabella." Marie was encouraged to write through her friendship with George and eventually took the pen name, Daniel Stern. George Sand eventually betrayed Marie by revealing Marie's breach with Liszt — under a very slight disguise — in George's novel Nélida (1845). George was competitive, sometimes jealous and challenged society's norms by wearing men's clothing, and even smoking in public. George's betrayal hurt Marie greatly, but from this pain she began to rely on her own self in furthering her writing.
Works
Her first stories (Hervé, Julien, Valentia, Nélida) were published in 1841-1845. Her best-known work (written as "Daniel Stern") is the Histoire de la Révolution de 1848 (appearing from 1850-53, in 3 volumes). D'Agoult's other works include Lettres Républicaines in Esquisses morales et politiques (1849, collected articles), Trois journées de la vie de Marie Stuart (1856), Florence et Turin (1862), Histoire des commencements de la république aux Pays-Bas (1872), and Mes souvenirs (1877, posthumously) which she had been working on at the time of her death in 1876. They were published as Mes Souvenirs, 1806-1833 (1877) and Mémoires, 1833-1854 (1927).
Marie had been raised a Catholic, but through the forces of literary and political liberalism, and left-leaning politicians, social theorists, and foreign exiles she converted into a republican and freethinker during the 1840s. She also helped her lover, Franz Liszt, write several works under his name.
Her salon
Marie created a Paris salon for thinkers, and musicians of her day. It became a multilingual center of European artists, writers, and revolutionaries. Through their discussions she wrote about the great events of her lifetime, eventually writing her authoritative account of France's 1848 revolution.
She was an ardent apostle of the ideas of 1848, and from this date her salon, which had been literary and artistic, took on a more political tone; revolutionists of various nationalities like liberal Republicans, Hippolyte Carnot, Jules Simon, Alphonse de Tocqueville, and the young Emile Olivier (who would later marry Blandine Liszt, one of Marie's daughters) were welcomed by her, and she had an especial friendship and sympathy for Daniele Manin.
During the Second Empire her salon once again became a center of liberal opposition.
In later life, her friends called her, "an Amazon of thought." She became one of nineteenth-century France's free and independent women long before feminism fully developed.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Cronin, Vincent. Four Women in Pursuit of an Ideal. London: Collins, 1965; also published as The Romantic Way. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966. ASIN B0000CMPJS
- d'Agoult, Marie. Nélida, State University of New York Press, 1846, 2003 edition. ISBN 0-7914-5912-8
- Stern, Daniel (Marie d'Agoult). Histoire de la révolution de 1848, Balland, 1851, 1985 edition. ISBN 2-7158-0500-4
- _____________. Esquisses morales; pensées, réflexions et maximes, J. Techener, 1859.
- Stock-Morton, Phyllis. The life of Marie d'Agoult, alias Daniel Stern. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8018-6313-9.
- Walker, Alan. Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years 1811-1847. Cornell University Press, 1983. ISBN 0-8014-9421-4
External Links
- Encyclopedia of 1848 Revolutions www.ohiou.edu Retrieved June 19, 2008.
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