INTRODUCTION
1. Jane Chance Nitzsche, The Genius Figure in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), ix. I have benefited from the insights of Jonathan Morton in an unpublished paper titled “Ingenious Genius: Invention, Creation, Reproduction in the High Middle Ages” devoted to Bernardus Silvestris, Alain de Lille, and Jean de Meun’s Roman de la rose.
2. Cicero, De Oratore, ed. H. Rackham, trans. E. W. Sutton, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), 2:xxxv, 149–50. For the Italian Renaissance use of the word, I am indebted to an unpublished paper by Dilwyn Knox. See also H. Weinrich, “Ingenium,” in Historisches Wörterbuch des Philosophie, ed. Joachim Ritter and Karlfried Gründer (Basel: Schwabe & Co., 1976), 4:360–63.
3. Peter Kivy, in his instructively titled book The Possessor and the Possessed: Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and the Idea of Musical Genius (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001), takes the examples of Mozart and Beethoven to illustrate this distinction.
4. I borrow the notions of “overdetermination” and “underspecification” from Terence Cave, Mignon’s Afterlives: Crossing Cultures from Goethe to the Twenty-First Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011): “Mignon is ‘overdetermined’: she has more characteristics and more potential storylines than one would expect in a relatively marginal narrative figure, and these features are clustered in ways that can easily seem discontinuous or even dissonant …, as if she were composed of more than one fictional character. At the same time, her story is underspecified: it leaves plenty of gaps for the reader, or for other writers, to fill. This special combination of overdetermination and underspecification seems to me to be what makes this literary instance (a character and story invented by Goethe) particularly prone to mutation, adaptation, imitation” (9). Despite the fact that Cave is examining a literary character, it seems to me that there are suggestive analogies between the construction of Mignon and the notion of genius.
5. Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, Critical Essays from the Spectator, ed. Donald F. Bond (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970), 250–53 (250). For the Querelle des anciens et des modernes, see Jean-Alexandre Perras, L’Exception exemplaire: Une histoire de la notion de génie du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (Thèse de doctorat, Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis & Université de Montréal, 2012), 215–52, and passim.
6. Longinus, An Essay upon Sublime (Oxford: Printed by L.L. for T. Leigh, 1698).
7. Jacques Chouillet, L’Esthétique des lumières (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1974), 146.
8. See Jonathan Bate, The Genius of Shakespeare, 2nd ed. (London: Picador, 2008).
9. Logan Pearsall Smith, Four Words: Romantic, Originality, Creative, Genius, Society for Pure English, Tract No. 17 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1924), 3–48 (footnote on 31).
10. Jochen Schmidt, Geschichte des Genie-Gedankens in der deutschen Literatur, Philosophie und Politik 1750–1945, 2 vols. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1985).
11. Kineret S. Jaffe, “The Concept of Genius: Its Changing Role in Eighteenth-Century French Aesthetics,” Journal of the History of Ideas 41, no. 4 (1980): 579–99, and Herbert Dieckmann, “Diderot’s Conception of Genius,” Journal of the History of Ideas 2, no. 2 (1941): 151–82. I should also mention Georges Matoré and A.-J. Greimas, “La naissance du ‘génie’ au XVIIIe siècle: étude lexicologique,” Le Français moderne 25 (1957): 256–72.
12. Penelope Murray, ed., Genius: The History of an Idea (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989) and Christine Battersby, Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics (London: Women’s Press, 1994). Darrin McMahon’s Divine Fury: A History of Genius (New York: Basic Books, 2013), which appeared just before my own book went to press, is, however, admirably comprehensive in its coverage.
13. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Le Totémisme aujourd’hui (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1962), 128.
14. There is only one study to my knowledge that provides a continuous history of the idea in France, but it covers the period from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century (partially overlapping with my own). It was coincidentally written at the same time as I have been writing mine, and gratifyingly confirms a sense not only that such a history is possible but that the time is ripe for it. See Perras, L’Exception exemplaire.
15. Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines [1746], ed. Charles Porset, preface by Jacques Derrida, “L’archéologie du frivole” (Paris: Galilée, 1973), 152–53, my emphasis. All translations into English are mine unless otherwise indicated.
16. Edward Young, Conjectures on Original Composition [1759] (Leeds: Scolar Press, 1966), 12, emphasis original. Unless otherwise indicated all further emphases in quotes are those of the original.
17. Ibid., 36.
18. Aristotle, “Problem XXX,1,” in Problems: Books 32–38. Rhetorica ad Alexandrum, trans. W. S. Hett and H. Rackham, rev. ed., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957), 953a. The scholarly consensus seems to be that even if Aristotle himself was not the author of the Problemata, they are sufficiently “Aristotelian” in character for attribution not to pose serious problems of interpretation. See, for example, Aristotle, L’Homme de génie et la mélancolie: Problème XXX,1, ed. Jackie Pigeaud (Paris: Rivages, 1991), “Présentation,” 1–78 (54). Klibansky is of the same view. See Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy. Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, and Art (London: Nelson, 1964), 34.
19. See Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life [1489], ed. and trans. Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark (Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1989); Juan Huarte, Examen de ingenios: The Examination of Mens Wits [1594], translated out of the Spanish by M. Camillo Camilli, translated to English out of his Italian by Richard Carew, facsimile reproduction ed. Carmen Rogers (Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1959); and Cesare Lombroso, The Man of Genius [1877] (London: W. Scott, 1891).
20. Aristotle, “Problem XXX,1,” 954a. Pigeaud describes the text as “une rêverie du mélange,” “Présentation,” 20.
21. Aristotle, “Problem XXX,1,” 954a.
22. Smith, Four Words, 23–24; Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment [1790], trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), §47. On inspiration, see also Timothy Clark, The Theory of Inspiration: Composition as a Crisis of Subjectivity in Romantic and Post-Romantic Writing (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997).
23. On this, see Penelope Murray, “Introduction,” in Plato on Poetry: Ion; Republic 376e-398b9; Republic 595–608b10, ed. Penelope Murray (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
24. Plato, “Ion,” in Early Socratic Dialogues, ed. and trans. Trevor J. Saunders (London: Penguin Books, 1987), 49–65 (538b).
25. Ibid., 533e, 534b, 534c.
26. Kant, Critique, §46.
27. Ibid., §46.
28. Ibid., §47.
29. Ibid., §47.
30. Ibid., §49.
CHAPTER 1 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: MIMESIS AND EFFECT
1. Strictly speaking the term “aesthetics” was coined by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten in his Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus [Reflections on poetry] (Halle, 1735).
2. Jean D’Alembert, Discours préliminaire de l’Encyclopédie, ed. Michel Malherbe (Paris: Vrin, 2000), 84, translated as Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclodpedia of Diderot by Richard N. Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/did2222.0001.083?rgn=main;view=fulltext;q1=preliminary+discourse (accessed 11 December 2013).
3. Ibid., 117.
4. “Inventer” and “Invention,” in Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, 4th ed. (Paris, 1762).
5. Condillac, Essai sur l’origine, 152; Claude-Adrien Helvétius, De l’esprit [1758], ed. François Châtelet (Verviers: Éditions Gérard & Cie., 1973), 375; Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit [1793–94], ed. Jean-Pierre Schandeler and Pierre Crépel (Paris: Institut national d’études démographiques, 2004), 417.
6. Condillac, Essai sur l’origine, 152; Helvétius, De l’esprit, 377–82. For Diderot’s response to Helvétius, see Denis Diderot, Réfutation suivie de l’ouvrage d’Helvétius intitulé l’Homme, in OEuvres complètes, vol. 24, ed. Roland Desné and Annette Lorenceau (Paris: Hermann, 2004), e.g., “Do not talk about chance; there is no happy or productive chance for narrow minds…. Do not talk to me either about sustained and powerful attention; weak minds are incapable of this.” Diderot, OEuvres philosophiques, ed. Paul Vernière (Paris: Garnier, Classiques Garnier, 1961), 584–85; Voltaire, “Génie,” in OEuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol. 5. Dictionnaire philosophique (Paris: P. Dupont, 1824), 30–35 (33).
7. Condillac, Dictionnaire des synonymes, in OEuvres philosophiques de Condillac, ed. Georges Le Roy (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1951), 3:95; Luc de Clapiers Marquis de Vauvenargues, Introduction à la connaissance de l’esprit humain [1747], ed. Jean Dagen (Paris: Flammarion, 1981), 76 and 78. For further discussion of the different views of genius in the eighteenth century, see Annie Becq, Genèse de l’esthétique française moderne: de la raison classique à l’imagination créatrice (Paris: Albin Michel, 1994), livre III, 2e Partie, chap. 2, and Perras, L’Exception exemplaire, chaps. 8 and 9.
8. Charles Bonnet, Essai analytique sur les facultés de l’âme [1760], ed. Serge Nicolas (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006), 239; Abbé Dubos, Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture [1719], 4th ed. [1740], ed. Dominique Désirat (Paris: École supérieure des Beaux-Arts, 1993), 2:2, 175; Vauvenargues, Introduction à la connaissance, 77; Diderot, “Sur le génie,” in OEuvres esthétiques, ed. Paul Vernière (Paris: Garnier, Classiques Garnier, 1959), 19–20 (19).
9. “Article Génie,” in Diderot, OEuvres esthétiques, 9–17 (9).
10. D’Alembert, Discours préliminaire, 102, 103.
11. Boileau, L’Art poétique, in OEuvres complètes, ed. Antoine Adam and Françoise Escal (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1966), 157; Charles Perrault, “Le génie. Épistre à Monsieur de Fontenelle,” in Parallèle des anciens et des modernes en ce qui regarde les arts et les sciences, ed. Hans Robert Jauss and Max Imdahl (Munich: Eidos Verlag, 1964), 172–74 (172).
12. M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition [1953] (London: Oxford University Press, 1971).
13. Peter Kivy’s account of genius in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries takes composers as its focus, but his account of the presentation of genius in Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven is based on models of genius that are not restricted to the specific case of musicians. See Kivy, Possessor and the Possessed.
14. Batteux, Les Beaux-Arts réduits à un même principe [1746], ed. Jean-Rémy Mantion (Paris: Aux Amateurs des livres, 1989), 92; Charles Batteux, Cours de Belles-Lettres (1753), 10–11, quoted in the notes to Les Beaux-Arts, 109, my emphasis. The Cours de Belles-Lettres were an expanded version of the earlier Beaux-Arts, and adopt the same lines of argument.
15. Diderot, Éloge de Richardson, in OEuvres esthétiques, 29–48 (35, 40), my emphasis; Diderot, “Sur le génie,” 19, 20.
16. For a history of the idea of originality in the eighteenth century, see Roland Mortier, L’Originalité, une nouvelle catégorie esthétique au siècle des lumières (Geneva: Droz, 1982).
17. Dubos, Réflexions, 1:26, 75; 1:27, 77.
18. Ibid., 1:77; Jean-François Marmontel, Éléments de littérature [1787], ed. Sophie Le Ménahèze (Paris: Desjonquères, 2005), 585–86.
19. Dubos, Réflexions, 1:24, 71.
20. “Article Génie,” 9, 16.
21. Ibid., 13.
22. Dubos, Réflexions, 2:1, 171.
23. Ibid., 1:2, 9; 1:1, 3; 1:3, 9–10.
24. Diderot, Éloge de Richardson, 31, 44. On the novel of sensibility in France, see Philip Stewart, L’Invention du sentiment: Roman et économie affective au dix-huitième siècle, SVEC, 2010/02 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2010).
25. Marmontel, Éléments, 587.
26. “Article Génie,” 17; Voltaire, “Génie,” 33.
27. Condillac, Essai sur l’origine, 152–53.
28. Marmontel, Éléments, 585.
29. Dubos, Réflexions, 2:2, 177; Marmontel, Éléments, 585; “Article Génie,” 12.
30. Denis Diderot, Salon de 1765, in Diderot, Salons, ed. Jean Seznec and Jean Adhémar (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957–67), 2:71.
31. Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Le Génie, le goût et l’esprit: poëme, en quatre chants, dédié à M. le Duc de **** (The Hague, 1756), 10. Despite the vehemence with which he defends genius in this poem, Mercier later denounces the whole notion as a prejudice concocted by men of letters. See his article “Génie” in Néologie, ou vocabulaire des mots nouveaux, à renouveler, ou pris dans des acceptions nouvelles (Paris: Moussard-Mardran, an IX, 1801), discussed by Perras, L’Exception exemplaire, 410–11.
32. Matoré and Greimas, “La naissance du ‘génie,’ ” 262–63.
33. Diderot, De la poésie dramatique, in OEuvres esthétiques, 169–287 (226). The text was first published in 1758; “Pastiche,” in Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, http://portail.atilf.fr/cgi-bin/getobject_?a.89:55./var/artfla/encyclopedie/textdata/image/ (accessed 21 February 2013).
34. Mercier, Le Génie, ii–iii, 11.
35. Batteux, Les Beaux-Arts, 83; 91.
36. Ibid., 87.
37. Dubos, Réflexions, 1:1, 1.
CHAPTER 2 GENIUS OBSCURED
1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique, in Écrits sur la musique, la langue et le théâtre. OEuvres complètes, vol. 5, ed. Bernard Gagnebin, Marcel Raymond, and Samuel Baud-Bovy (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1995), 837, 838. The polemical tone in this entry is no doubt due to Rousseau’s partisan position on the question of French vs. Italian music: French music is for those devoid of genius. The epigraph to this chapter is taken from the entry for “Scène.”
2. Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique, 34–35; Diderot, Réfutation, in OEuvres philosophiques, 590–91.
3. Diderot, Paradoxe sur le comédien, in OEuvres esthétiques, 289–381 (310, 313).
4. Ibid., 358, my emphasis.
5. Ibid., 307, 378.
6. See Vernière’s discussion of the matter in his edition of Diderot’s OEuvres esthétiques, 5–8.
7. Diderot, Salon de 1767, in Diderot, Salons, 3:147; Diderot, Le Neveu de Rameau, ed. Jean-Claude Bonnet (Paris: Flammarion, 1983), 106. Bonnet’s Introduction provides a good account of the history of the text’s protracted composition. English translation from Denis Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew; and, First Satire, trans. Margaret Mauldon, ed. Nicholas Cronk (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 63, translation modified. All further translations from this edition unless otherwise indicated.
8. Diderot, Le Neveu, 112/69; Entretiens sur le Fils naturel, in OEuvres esthétiques, 69–175 (115).
9. Diderot, Le Neveu, 111/68.
10. Ibid., 123/80.
11. Ibid., Le Neveu, 46/3; Diderot, De la poésie dramatique, 179–287 (218); Le Neveu, 55/12.
12. Diderot, Le Neveu, 75, my translation.
13. Ibid., 47/4. Herbert Dieckmann makes the point about individuality very clearly. See “Diderot’s Conception,” 151–52 and passim.
14. Diderot, Le Neveu, 50, my translation; 122/79, translation slightly adapted.
15. Ibid., 52/9.
16. Ibid., Le Neveu, 55/12.
17. Diderot, Entretiens, 98.
18. Condillac, Essai sur l’origine, 153.
CHAPTER 3 LANGUAGE, RELIGION, NATION
1. Jean-François de La Harpe, “Introduction,” in Lycée, ou Cours de littérature ancienne et moderne [1798–1804], 14 vols. (Paris: Depelafol, 1825), 1:10, 11. The original edition was published in 18 vols.
2. Ibid., 1:15, 14, 2.
3. Ibid., 1:20.
4. For Sainte-Beuve’s treatment of genius in literary criticism, see my Biography and the Question of Literature in France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), chap. 6.
5. La Harpe, “Introduction,” 1:ii.
6. Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation [1818], 2 vols., trans. E. F. J. Payne (New York: Dover, 1969). See also Schmidt, Geschichte des Genie-Gedankens.
7. See Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “On Poesy or Art,” in Biographia Literaria, ed. J. Shawcross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 2:253–63; William Hazlitt, “On Genius and Common Sense,” in Table Talk: The Selected Writings of William Hazlitt, ed. Duncan Wu (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1998), 6:26–43, and “Whether Genius Is Conscious of Its Powers?,” in The Plain Speaker: The Selected Writings of William Hazlitt, ed. Duncan Wu (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1998), 8:108–17; Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” [1841], in Selected Essays, ed. Larzer Ziff (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), 175–203.
8. Victor de Vautré, Génie du whist méconnu jusqu’à présent, quoique joué avec une espèce de fureur par toute l’Europe, avec ses explications et des maximes certaines pour gagner (Paris: Ledoyen, 1839); Le Génie de la mode. Journal de l’élégance parisienne (1862–84); M. Gustave Mercier-Lacombe, Naissance et génie (Paris: H. Souverain, 1839), 11; Le Génie et ses droits, vol. 6 of Paris vivant par des hommes nouveaux (Paris: G. de Gonet, 1858), 5–7.
9. Voltaire, “Génie,” 36.
10. Bertrand d’Ayrolles, ed., Dictionnaire classique de Géographie Ancienne, pour l’intelligence des auteurs anciens, Servant d’introduction à celui de la Géographie moderne de Laurent Echard, ou description abrégée des Monarchies, des Royaumes, … depuis le commencement du monde, jusqu’à la décadence de l’Empire Romain dans lequel on donne une idée succinte du Genie, des Moeurs, de la Religion, … des Peuples de la terre sous les différentes Dominations des Perses, des Assyriens, des Grecs & des Romains, (Paris: Lacombe, libr., 1768); M. de L. M. de l’Académie de P. Luc, Description historique de l’Italie, en forme de dictionnaire: contenant 1) la géographie tant ancienne que moderne, … 2) l’esprit de leur gouvernement … 3) le génie des habitants, les moeurs, … 4) un détail circonstancié des monumens antiques, … 5) la description des églises, palais et édifices publics, … 6) un détail des peintures en mosaïques et tableaux répandus dans les églises et galeries …, 2 vols. (Avignon: Chambeau, 1790).
11. Dominique Bouhours, Les Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène [1671], ed. Ferdinand Brunot (Paris: A. Colin, 1962), 40, 32. For a history of the notion of the genius of the French language, see Gilles Siouffi, Le Génie de la langue française: Études des structures imaginaires de la description linguistique à l’âge classique (Paris: Champion, 2010).
12. Quoted in Sylvain Menant’s “Présentation” in Antoine comte de Rivarol, Pensées diverses, suivi de Discours sur l’universalité de la langue française, Lettre sur le globe aérostatique, ed. Sylvain Menant (Paris: Desjonquères, 1998), 20. Menant’s introduction includes a useful account of earlier discussions of the French language.
13. Rivarol, Discours, 105, 114.
14. Ibid., 116, 123, 125, 124.
15. Quoted from Chênedollé’s memoir of Rivarol by Sainte-Beuve in his essay on Chênedollé in Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Chateaubriand et son groupe littéraire sous l’empire: Cours professé à Liège en 1848–1849, ed. Maurice Allem (Paris: Garnier, 1949), 2:119–26 (127). Chênedollé was the author of a didactic poem titled Le Génie de l’homme (1807), which Rivarol had encouraged him to write and to which I shall return in the next chapter. See OEuvres complètes de Chênedollé, rev. ed. (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1864). Sainte-Beuve also wrote a preface for this edition.
16. Preface to the first edition. François René Chateaubriand, Essai sur les révolutions; Génie du christianisme, ed. Maurice Regard (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1978), 1281–83 (1282).
17. Essai historique, politique et moral sur les révolutions anciennes et modernes considérées dans leurs rapports avec la révolution française, in Génie du christianisme, 41–42.
18. Chateaubriand, Génie du christianisme, 469–70.
19. Ibid., 529, 769, 629, 632, 633.
20. Ibid., 833.
21. Ibid., 635.
22. Ibid., 805, 825.
23. Madame de Staël, De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales [1799], ed. Axel Blaeschke (Paris: Garnier, Classiques Garnier, 1998), 17, 146, 152.
24. Preface to Madame de Staël, De l’Allemagne [1813], ed. Simone Balayé (Paris: Flammarion, 1968), 1:39. The book was officially published only in 1813. On this episode, see Angelica Goodden, Madame de Staël: The Dangerous Exile (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 192–93. The ten-year exile had required Mme de Staël’s exclusion from a certain radius around Paris, rather than from France itself. In practice, she spent much of the time at her estate at Coppet on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland.
25. As Simone Balayé says in her discussion of Mme de Staël’s views on genius, her lifelong concern with the topic never took the form of a theory. See Simone Balayé, “Le génie et la gloire dans l’œuvre de M.me de Staël,” Rivista di letterature moderne et comparate 20, nos. 3–4 (1967): 202–14.
26. Staël, De l’Allemagne, 1:181 and 371. For the other references see, for example, 1:203 and 233.
27. The beneficial effects of Christianity on civilization and culture were already a theme in Staël, De la littérature.
28. Staël, De l’Allemagne, 1:162, 46, 131, 46, 191.
29. Ibid., 1:197.
30. Ibid., 2:50.
31. “Désormais il faut avoir l’esprit européen,” quoted by Émile Faguet, “Madame de Staël,” Revue des deux mondes 83 (1887): 357–94 (394).
32. Staël, De l’Allemagne, 1:99, 2:72.
CHAPTER 4 INDIVIDUAL VERSUS COLLECTIVE GENIUS
1. Chênedollé, Le Génie de l’homme, 136.
2. Édouard Alletz, Génie du dix-neuvième siècle, ou Esquisse des progrès de l’esprit humain depuis 1800 jusqu’à nos jours (Paris: Paulin, 1842–43), xi.
3. Ibid., l. [this shd be the letter ‘l’. does it work better as a capital? L??]
4. Jules Michelet, Le Peuple [1846] 5th ed., ed. Paul Viallaneix (Paris: Flammarion, 1974), 236.
5. Ibid., 184, 190.
6. Alfred de Vigny, Chatterton, ed. Pierre-Louis Rey (Paris: Gallimard, foliothéâtre, 2001), 1:v (71).
7. Charles Nodier, “Notice historique,” in M. (Nicolas-Joseph-Laurent) Gilbert, OEuvres de Gilbert [1817], ed. Charles Nodier, rev. ed. (Paris: Garnier, 1921), 1–14 (5).
8. John Keats, “Sonnet to Chatterton” (1815); William Wordsworth, “Resolution and Independence” (1807); Chateaubriand, Génie du christianisme, 1153n15. On the suicide of Escousse and Lebras, see Paul Bénichou, Les Mages romantiques (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), 169. On the issue of suffering poets, see also Jean-Luc Steinmetz, “Du poète malheureux au poète maudit (réflexion sur la constitution d’un mythe),” OEuvres & critiques 7, no. 1 (1982): 75–86, and Pascal Brissette, La Malédiction littéraire: du poète crotté au génie malheureux (Montreal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2005).
9. Alfred de Vigny, Stello, in OEuvres complètes, ed. Alphonse Bouvet (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1993), 2:623, 625. Stello was first published in three separate installments in the Revue des deux mondes between October 1831 and April 1832.
10. Chatterton’s remark about his heart on a shop counter comes from act 3, scene 1 of the stage version. Vigny, Chatterton, 101; Vigny, Stello, 547. Chatterton’s story is told in “L’Histoire de Kitty Bell” in Stello.
11. Vigny, Chatterton, 44.
CHAPTER 5 THE ROMANTIC POET AND THE BROTHERHOOD OF GENIUS
1. Alfred de Vigny, “Moïse,” in Poèmes antiques et modernes, OEuvres complètes, vol. 1, ed. François Germain and André Jarry (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1986).
2. Alfred de Vigny, “Lettres à une puritaine,” Revue de Paris 4, quoted in Paul Bénichou, Le Sacre de l’écrivain, 1750–1830: Essai sur l’avènement d’un pouvoir spirituel laïque dans la France moderne (Paris: J. Corti, 1973), 370.
3. “Vox clamabat in deserto,” “Nos canimus surdis,” Victor Hugo, Odes et ballades, in OEuvres complètes: Poésie I, ed. Claude Gély (Paris: Laffont, 1985).
4. Victor Hugo, “Sur un poète apparu en 1820,” Littérature et philosophie mêlées, in OEuvres complètes: Critique, ed. Jean-Pierre Reynaud (Paris: R. Laffont, 2002), 82–84 (83, 84).
5. Hugo, “Préface,” in Odes et ballades, 58.
6. Ibid., 62.
7. Lamartine, “Ferrare.” The poem was inspired by a visit to Tasso’s prison, Tasso being the patron saint of the suffering poet in the period. It was included in the 1849 edition of the Meditations. The line from Hugo is in “À M. de Chateaubriand,” in Odes et ballades, iii, 2; Hugo, “Préface,” 59, 56.
8. Lamartine, “Première préface des Méditations (1849),” in Alphonse de Lamartine, Méditations, ed. Fernand Letessier (Paris: Garnier frères, 1968), 297–319 (310 and 304–5); Hugo, “Préface,” 59; Lamartine, “Ode,” in Méditations, x.
9. Hugo, Odes et ballades, iv, 9 and iv, 6.
10. Lamartine, “Première préface,” 303.
11. Hugo, “Preface,” 62. See Aurélie Loiseleur, L’Harmonie selon Lamartine: utopie d’un lieu commun (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2005), 66ff., for a discussion of the importance and frequency of the génie/harmonie rhyme in Lamartine’s poetry.
12. Hugo, Les Orientales in OEuvres complètes: Poésie I, xxxiv.
13. On the notion of an entry into literature, see José-Luis Diaz, L’Écrivain imaginaire: scénographies auctoriales à l’époque romantique (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2007).
14. Lamartine, “Commentaires,” in Méditations, 328.
15. Ibid., 359. “Bonaparte” appeared in the Nouvelles meditations, whose first edition was published in 1823.
16. Lamartine, “Commentaires,” 343, 358.
17. Ibid., 340.
18. Victor Hugo, Victor Hugo raconté par un témoin de sa vie, in L’oeuvre complète de Victor Hugo (Paris: Jean de Bonnot, 1979), 42:187. The episode is recounted in chap. 4 of Graham Robb, Victor Hugo [1997] (London: Picador, 1998).
19. Hugo, “Sur un poète apparu en 1820,” 82. He had already dedicated “La lyre et la harpe” to Lamartine (who is represented by the harp) in 1822.
20. Sainte-Beuve, “Victor Hugo. Odes et ballades,” reprinted in Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Premiers lundis, 3 vols. (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1883–86), 1:164–88 (164–65, 178).
21. Hugo, “À mon ami S.B.,” in Odes et ballades, iv, 17.
22. Hugo, Victor Hugo raconté, 212, 213, 215.
23. Hugo, “Préface,” 54; Hugo, Victor Hugo raconté, 216.
24. My emphases.
25. Sainte-Beuve, “Victor Hugo,” 166, 170.
26. John Keats, Endymion (1818). Keats, like Shelley, also favored the form of the ode.
27. Hugo, Odes et ballades, iv, 17, my emphasis.
28. Honoré de Balzac, Pensées, Sujets, Fragmens, ed. Jacques Crépet (Paris: A. Blaizot, 1910), 18, quoted in Gretchen R. Besser, Balzac’s Concept of Genius: The Theme of Superiority in the “Comédie Humaine” (Geneva: Droz, 1969), 25.
CHAPTER 6 VICTOR HUGO, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, AND THE DYNASTY OF GENIUS
1. Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare, in OEuvres complètes: Critique, 237–462 (310).
2. Bénichou, Les Mages romantiques, 492–93.
3. Hugo, William Shakespeare, 390.
4. Ibid., 257, 340. English translation here from Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare, trans. Melville B. Anderson [1887] (Honolulu, Hawaii: University Press of the Pacific, 2001), 191.
5. Hugo, William Shakespeare, 246.
6. Ibid., 289, 349, 373, 288, 372–73. Longer quotation from Anderson translation (slightly adapted), 262.
7. Ibid., 375, 354.
8. Ibid., 278, 267, 274, 303.
9. Ibid., 271, 274, 282.
10. Ibid., 377 (my emphasis), 381.
11. Hugo, “Du génie,” in OEuvres complètes: Critique, 560–63 (561).
12. Hugo, William Shakespeare, 316.
13. Ibid., 289.
14. Henri Meschonnic, Hugo, la poésie contre le maintien de l’ordre (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2002), 56. Meschonnic has a rewarding discussion of the historical function that Hugo ascribes to genius.
15. Hugo, William Shakespeare, 283, 406, 399.
16. Ibid., 431, 433, 397.
17. Ibid., 43; Michelet, Le Peuple, 57.
18. Hugo, William Shakespeare, 288. On the reception of Shakespeare’s genius by the French, see Bate, Genius of Shakespeare, chap. 6.
19. Quoted in Robb, Victor Hugo, 245 and 378. Dickens’s remark appears in a letter to the Countess of Blessington dated January 1847. Robb also provides an excellent account of Hugo’s political evolution.
CHAPTER 7 GENIUS UNDER OBSERVATION—LÉLUT
1. On this history, see Jan Goldstein’s indispensable study, Console and Classify: The French Psychiatric Profession in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Juan Rigoli, Lire le délire, aliénisme, rhétorique et littérature en France au XIX siècle (Paris: Fayard, 2001); Ian R. Dowbiggin, Inheriting Madness: Professionalization and Psychiatric Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); and Elizabeth A. Williams, The Physical and the Moral. Anthropology, Physiology, and Philosophical Medicine in France, 1750–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Goldstein also discusses the issue of terminology (6), as does Rigoli, 16.
2. Mme de Staël, Essai sur les fictions [1796], in OEuvres de jeunesse, ed. Simone Balayé and John Isbell (Paris: Desjonquères, 1997), 131–56 (131); and Staël, De l’Allemagne, 1:259.
3. Vigny, Chatterton, 42; Baudelaire, “La reine des facultés,” Salon de 1859, in Curiosités esthétiques, L’Art romantique et Autres oeuvres critiques de Baudelaire, ed. Henri Lemaitre (Paris: Editions Garnier, 1986), 320–24.
4. Unsigned “Avertissement” to “Série de fragments sur l’aliénation mentale,” Journal général de médecine 62 (1818): 145, quoted in Goldstein, Console and Classify, 106. Esquirol’s encomium comes from his Des passions (1805), 7, also quoted by Goldstein, 80.
5. Julien-Joseph Virey, “Génie,” in Dictionnaire des sciences médicales: par une société de médecins et de chirurgiens, 60 vols., ed. M. M. Alard et al. (Paris: Panckoucke, 1812–22), 18:87.
6. Joseph-Henri Réveillé-Parise, Physiologie et hygiène des hommes livrés aux travaux de l’esprit, ou Recherches sur le physique et le moral, les habitudes, les maladies et le régime des gens de lettres, artistes, savants, hommes d’état, jurisconsultes, administrateurs, rev. ed., ed. Dr. Ed. Carrière (Paris: J.-B. Baillière et fils, 1881), 61. First published in 1834, the book subsequently went through several further editions.
7. Lombroso, Man of Genius, 1; on the history of the link between melancholy and genius, see Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, and Jean Clair, ed., Mélancolie: génie et folie en occident (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2005).
8. Dubos, Réflexions, 2:175; Diderot, “Sur le génie,” 19; Samuel Auguste André David Tissot, De la santé des gens de lettres (Lausanne: F. Grasset, 1775), 31. The first edition appeared in 1758. On the pathologizing of writers, see Anne C. Vila, “Somaticizing the Thinker: Biography, Pathography, and the Medicalization of gens de lettres in Eighteenth-Century France,” in Littérature et médecine: approches et perspectives (XVIe–XIXe siècle), ed. Andrea Carlino and Alexandre Wenger (Geneva: Droz, 2007), 89–111; Louis-Francisque Lélut, Le Génie, la raison et la folie: le démon de Socrate. Application de la science psychologique à l’histoire (Paris: Librairie J.-B. Baillière et fils, n.d.), 332.
9. On the role given to observation by the emergent profession, see Rigoli, Lire le délire, 51ff.
10. Pinel, letter dated 11 nivôse Year XIV, quoted by Goldstein, Console and Classify, 66, my emphasis; Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours, Psychologie morbide: dans ses rap- ports avec la philosophie de l’histoire, ou de l’influence des névropathes sur le dynamisme intellectuel (Paris: V. Masson, 1859), passim. See Lélut, Le Génie, la raison et la folie (this was a revised and enlarged edition of Du démon de Socrate, spécimen d’une application de la science psychologique à celle de l’histoire [Paris: Trinquart, 1836] and L’Amulette de Pascal pour servir à l’histoire des hallucinations [Paris: Baillière, 1846], first published as De l’amulette de Pascal, étude sur les rapports de la santé de ce grand homme à son génie [Paris: impr. de Bourgogne et Martinet, 1845]). All references are to the second edition of each study; Lélut, L’Amulette de Pascal, 35.
11. Lélut, Le Génie, la raison et la folie, 48.
12. John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel (1681), pt. 1, lines 163–64; Schopenhauer, World as Will, 1;190.. On the literary representation of the sick artist, see Françoise Grauby, Le Corps de l’artiste: discours médical et représentations littéraires de l’artiste au XIXe siècle (Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, 2001).
13. Philippe Pinel, Traité médico-philosophique sur l’aliénation mentale, ou La manie (Paris: Richard, Caille et Ravier, 1800), 110–11; English translation: A Treatise on Insanity, trans. D. D. Davis, M.D. (London: Cadell and Davies, 1806), 113–14. The translator is described as being “physician to the Sheffield Royal Infirmary” and is the author of an enthusiastic and well-informed preface that is suggestive of the degree of interest outside France in Pinel’s ideas.
14. On this see Jackie Pigeaud, “Lélut et le démon de Socrate,” in Poétiques du corps: aux origines de la médecine (Paris: Les Belles lettres, 2008), 621–56 (622).
15. Pinel, Traité, 70, my translation; Vila, “Somaticizing the Thinker,” 98; Condillac, Essai sur l’origine, 146.
16. Lélut, Le Génie, la raison et la folie, 332.
17. Lélut, L’Amulette de Pascal, 4, 2–3, 21.
18. Ibid., 44.
19. Ibid., 82.
20. Ibid., 109.
21. On this, see Goldstein, Console and Classify, 53–54, 260, and 92.
22. Lélut, Le Génie, la raison et la folie, 29.
23. This remark is made in the earlier edition, Du démon de Socrate, 18.
24. Lélut, Le Génie, la raison et la folie, 174.
25. Lélut, L’Amulette de Pascal, xiii.
26. Lélut, Le Génie, la raison et la folie, 8, 16, 91.
27. Ibid., 155.
28. Ibid., 152.
29. Ibid., 251, 157–58. There is nothing unusual in Lélut’s surprise, as can be seen from a modern study of Pascal in which the author, while not endorsing Lélut’s diagnosis of hallucinations, sees evidence of clinical depression caused by separation in infancy and marasmus following unsuccessful weaning. See John R. Cole, Pascal: The Man and His Two Loves (New York: New York University Press, 1995).
30. Lélut, L’Amulette de Pascal, 147. Lélut was not alone in using this term for the phenomenon previously known as melancholy. Esquirol introduced the term lypémanie for the same condition in 1820, though it proved to be less durable than hypocondrie. On the classical education of medical men of Lélut’s generation, see Rigoli, Lire le délire, 133ff.
CHAPTER 8 GENIUS, NEUROSIS, AND FAMILY TREES: MOREAU DE TOURS
1. Moreau, Psychologie morbide, 8.
2. Ibid., 33, 99, 109.
3. Ibid., 530.
4. Ibid., 465, 217, 464.
5. Ibid., 39, 37, 384, 386, 422, 423.
6. Ibid., 493.
7. Ibid., 494.
8. Ibid., 39, 18.
9. Ibid., 448, 390, 391, 244–45.
10. Ibid., 388, 390.
11. Ibid., 495, 426.
12. Pinel, Traité, 78, quoted in Rigoli, Lire le délire, 98; Émile Deschanel, Physiologie des écrivains et des artistes: ou, Essai de critique naturelle (Paris: Librairie de L. Hachette et cie, 1864), 148; Moreau, Psychologie morbide, 495.
13. Lélut, Le Génie, la raison et la folie, 205, 196.
14. Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours, Du hachisch et de l’aliénation mentale: études psychologiques (Paris: Librairie de Fortin, Masson et cie, 1845), 29–30, 4.
15. Ibid., 32–33; Moreau, Psychologie morbide, 230.
16. Moreau, Psychologie morbide, 459 (my emphasis), 458.
17. Ibid., 458, 457, 459, 460.
18. Ibid., 503.
19. Ibid., 503.
20. On the development of the profession, see Dowbiggin, Inheriting Madness.
CHAPTER 9 GENIUS RESTORED TO HEALTH
1. Pierre Flourens, De la raison, du génie, et de la folie (Paris: Garnier frères, 1861), 116.
2. Deschanel, Physiologie des écrivains, 150.
3. Gabriel Séailles, Essai sur le génie dans l’art [1883], 3rd ed. (Paris: F. Alcan, 1902), 174, 72. Séailles refers in particular to Maudsley’s The Physiology of Mind (1876).
4. Séailles, Essai sur le génie dans l’art, 123.
5. Ibid., 254, 247.
6. Deschanel, Physiologie des écrivains, 6. Toulouse’s study of Poincaré appeared as Enquête médico-psychologique sur la supériorité intellectuelle: Henri Poincaré (Paris: Flammarion, 1910).
7. Édouard Toulouse, Emile Zola: Enquête intellectuelle médico-psychologique sur les rapports de la supériorité avec la névropathie (Paris: Flammarion, 1896), xiv, 280.
8. Ibid., 1.
9. Deschanel, Physiologie des écrivains, 150.
10. Maurice de Fleury, Introduction à la médecine de l’esprit (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1897), 140, 123–24.
11. Réveillé-Parise, Physiologie et hygiène des hommes livrés aux travaux de l’esprit (ed. Carrière), 98, 126.
12. Zola’s biographer, Henri Mitterand, points out that Toulouse accepted Zola’s information about his family background on trust, without checking facts that turned out later to be erroneous, and that discretion about Zola’s sex life extends to complete silence about his relationship with Jeanne Rozerot and his two illegitimate children. See Henri Mitterand, Zola, vol. 3, L’Honneur 1893–1902 (Paris: Fayard, 2002), 233.
13. Toulouse, Emile Zola, 179, 153.
14. Ibid., 179.
15. Ibid., vi–vii.
16. Fleury, Introduction à la médecine de l’esprit, 147.
17. Ibid., 111.
18. Ibid., 137.
CHAPTER 10 A NOVEL OF FEMALE GENIUS: MME DE STAÌL’S CORINNE
1. Rousseau, Lettre à Mr. d’Alembert sur les spectacles, ed. M. Fuchs (Lille: Librairie Giard, 1948), 138–39n, quoted in English translation by Christine Battersby in Gender and Genius, 50. Battersby provides an energetic discussion of the gendering of genius.
2. Diderot, Sur les femmes, in OEuvres, ed. André Billy (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1951), 958, quoted by Yvon Belaval, L’Esthétique sans paradoxe de Diderot (Paris: Gallimard, 1950), 152–53.
3. Julien-Joseph Virey, De l’influence des femmes sur le goût dans la littérature et les beaux-arts, pendant le XVIIe et le XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Deterville, 1810), 12–16, mentioned in Anne C. Vila, “The Scholar’s Body: Health, Sexuality and the Ambiguous Pleasures of Thinking in Eighteenth-Century France,” in The Eighteenth-Century Body: Art, History, Literature, Medicine, ed. Angelica Goodden (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2002), 115–33 (121).
4. Staël, Essai sur les fictions, 146; Staël, De la littérature, 149, 223.
5. Staël, Essai sur les fictions, 138, 141, 149.
6. Balzac, “Avant-propos,” in La Comédie humaine, ed. Pierre-Georges Castex et al. (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1976), 7–20 (8). On the masculine bias of the realist novel, see Naomi Schor, Breaking the Chain: Women, Theory, and French Realist Fiction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).
7. Reported by Balzac’s sister, Laure Surville, Balzac, sa vie et ses oeuvres d’après sa correspondance (Paris: Librairie Nouvelle, 1858), 95.
8. Staël, De la littérature, 139–40. On this, see Goodden, Madame de Staël, 85. Goodden makes it clear that Mme de Staël had little time for issues that would now be described as feminist, and invariably preferred the intellectual and social company of men to that of women.
9. Madame de Staël, Corinne ou l’Italie [1807], ed. Simone Balayé (Paris: Gallimard, folio classique, 1985), 51. Translation taken from Mme de Staël, Corinne, or, Italy, trans. and ed. Sylvia Raphael, introduction by John Isbell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 23. All further translations are from this edition unless otherwise indicated. Modified translations are indicated by an asterisk.
10. Staël, Corinne, 57/27, 582/401.
11. Ibid., 68/34.
12. Ibid., 84–85/46. Simone Balayé is the only person to have specifically addressed the issue of gloire in connection with Mme de Staël’s portrayal of genius. See Balayé, “Le génie et la gloire,” 202–14.
13. Staël, Corinne, 431/293, 579/399, 98/55–56.
14. Ibid., 54/24*, 55/25*.
15. Ibid., 430/291.
16. Ibid., 177/111, 55/25*.
17. Ibid., 125/76.
18. Ibid., 584/402, 216/140, 217/140.
19. Ibid., 419/284*.
20. Ibid., 410/277–78*, 516/354.
21. Madelyn Gutwirth, Madame de Staël, Novelist: The Emergence of the Artist as Woman (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 299 and 259, and Goodden, Madame de Staël, 64 and 299; on Mme de Staël as genius, see Claudine Herrmann, “Corinne, femme de génie,” Cahiers staëliens 35 (1984): 60–76 (60).
22. Completed in 1822, it now hangs in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and is reproduced on the cover of the Gallimard “folio” edition of Corinne, as if to encourage the confusion between novelist and heroine.
23. See Béatrice Didier, Corinne ou l’Italie de Madame de Staël (Paris: Gallimard, 1999), 83.
24. Staël, Corinne, 579–80/399.
25. Ibid., 587/404.
26. Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, “Madame de Staël” [1835], in Portraits de femmes [1844], ed. Gérald Antoine (Paris: Gallimard, folio classique, 1998), 125–216 (131).
27. He might also have mentioned Napoleon, an emblematic genius figure for the nineteenth century, who, if not directly a rival, was her tormentor, condemning her to exile, but finally conceded, after her death and during his own exile on Saint Helena, that “she would last.” See Goodden, Madame de Staël, 4.
CHAPTER 11 BALZAC’S LOUIS LAMBERT: GENIUS AND THE FEMININE MEDIATOR
1. Balzac, “Des artistes,” in OEuvres diverses, L’œuvre de Balzac, ed. Albert Béguin (Paris: Formes et reflets, 1952), 14:960–77 (964, 967).
2. Ibid., 967.
3. Quoted in Michel Lichtlé’s notes to the Pléiade edition of the novel, in Balzac, La Comédie humaine, vol. 11, Études philosophiques, Études analytiques, ed. Pierre-Georges Castex (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1980), 1600.
4. Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, in Curiosités esthétiques, 659–88 (679).
5. Balzac, Louis Lambert, Les Proscrits, Jésus-Christ en Flandre, eds Raymond Abellio and Samuel S. de Sacy (Paris: Gallimard, folio classique, 1980), 43.
6. Ibid., 160; Besser, Balzac’s Concept of Genius, 78.
7. Balzac, Lettres à l’étrangère (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1906), 15 April 1842, 30.
8. On this, see Lichtlé’s introduction.
9. See Henri Evans, Louis Lambert et la philosophie de Balzac (Paris: J. Corti, 1951), and Per Nykrog, La Pensée de Balzac dans la Comédie humaine: esquisse de quelques concepts-clé (Copenhagen: Muksgaard, 1965).
10. Quoted from the manuscript of an early version of the novel in Lichtlé’s notes to the Pléiade edition, 1502, my emphasis. See also Tim Farrant, Balzac’s Shorter Fiction: Genesis and Genre (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 154.
11. For a discussion of this and for an account of genius in Balzac’s entire oeuvre, see Besser, Balzac’s Concept of Genius.
12. Balzac, Louis Lambert, 56, 151–52, 51.
13. Ibid., 75, 71, 76.
14. Balzac, La Peau de chagrin, in La Comédie humaine, ed. Pierre-Georges Castex (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1979), 10:104.
15. Balzac, La Recherche de l’absolu, ed. Raymond Abellio and S. de Sacy (Paris: Gallimard, folio, 1976), 174. The novel was written in 1834, in the period when Balzac was revising Louis Lambert for publication in the Études philosophiques. On Balzac’s correspondence with Moreau de Tours, see Besser, Balzac’s Concept of Genius, 79, and Goldstein, Console and Classify, 266.
16. This variant is quoted by Lichtlé, 1599.
17. Balzac, Louis Lambert, 58.
18. Ibid., 88, 65.
19. Ibid., 168.
20. Ibid., 79.
21. Ibid., 34.
22. Ibid., 33, 59, 62.
23. Ibid., 106, 67, 147.
24. Ibid., 95.
CHAPTER 12 CREATIVITY AND PROCREATION IN ZOLA’S L’OEUVRE
1. Henri Mitterand, “Étude,” editor’s introduction to L’Œuvre, Émile Zola, Les Rougon-Macquart, vol. 4, ed. Armand Lanoux (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliotheque de la Pléiade, 1966), 1337–1406, 1347; Émile Zola, L’Œuvre, ed. Henri Mitterand (Paris: Gallimard, folio classique, 1983), 253. On Zola’s familiarity with the work of Moreau de Tours, see Mitterand, Zola, 3:229. Both Zola and Moreau had been influenced by Prosper Lucas. See Mitterand, Zola, vol. 1, Sous le regard d’Olympia (1840–1871) (Paris: Fayard, 1999), 719ff.
2. Nana is the central figure in the novel of that title (1880), Étienne of Germinal (1885) the novel that immediately preceded L’Œuvre, and Jacques of La Bête humaine (1890). L’Assommoir appeared in 1877.
3. Mitterand, “Notice,” 1364. The note from Une page d’amour is quoted in the “Notice,” 1350. The remark from the Ébauche is quoted in Patrick Brady, “L’Œuvre” de Émile Zola, roman sur les arts (Geneva: Droz, 1967), 387. Brady’s study contains the Ébauche in an appendix.
4. Zola, L’Œuvre, 402, 281. Translation from Émile Zola, The Masterpiece, trans. Thomas Walton and Roger Pearson, ed. Roger Pearson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 357, 240. All further translations are from this volume, unless otherwise indicated. Modified translations are indicated by an asterisk.
5. Balzac, Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu, in La Comédie humaine, 10:414. On the depiction of insanity in artists, see Max Milner, “Le peintre fou,” Romantisme 66 (1989): 5–21.
6. Zola, “Après une promenade au Salon” (Le Figaro, 23 May 1881), in Zola, Mon salon, Manet, Écrits sur l’art, ed. Antoinette Ehrard (Paris: Flammarion, 1970), 353–58 (358); “L’argent dans la littérature,” in Le Roman expérimental, ed. Aimé Guedj (Paris: Flammarion, 1971), 175–210 (208, 180). Much has been written about the possible models for Claude, and I do not intend to rehearse it here. See Mitterand’s “Notice,” 1341ff.; Gaëtan Picon, “Zola’s Painters,” Yale French Studies 42 (1969): 126–42; and Robert J. Niess, Zola, Cézanne, and Manet: A Study of L’Œuvre (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968).
7. Zola, Le Roman expérimental, 66.
8. Zola, Mon salon, 136; Ébauche, 300/38—301/39, reproduced in Brady, “L’Œuvre” de Émile Zola, 438.
9. Zola, L’Œuvre, 403–4/358.
10. Zola, L’Œuvre, 269/229.
11. Balzac, La Maison du chat-qui-pelote, in La Comédie humaine, 1:74.
12. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Charles Demailly [1896] (Paris: Ernest Flammarion, Eugène Fasquelle, n.d.), 191.
13. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Manette Salomon [1867] (Paris: Ernest Flammarion, Eugène Fasquelle, n.d.), 154–55.
14. Zola, L’Œuvre, 390/346.
15. Ibid., 117/84*, 71–72/42.
16. Ibid., 79/48–49*.
17. Ibid., 290/249*.
18. Ibid., 279/239*, 280/239*, 276/235.
19. Ibid., 283/242, 286/243.
20. Ibid., 66/36*; Zola, “Le Moment artistique,” in Mon salon, 59; Zola, “Proudhon et Courbet,” Mes haines, causeries littéraires et artistiques, in Écrits sur l’art, ed. Jean-Pierre Leduc-Adine (Paris: Gallimard, 1991), 41–54 (47, 44, 50); Zola, “M. H. Taine, artiste,” in Écrits sur l’art, 63–83 (68).
21. Zola, L’Œuvre, 277/236*.
22. Ibid., 222/184*.
23. Ibid., 64/35*.
24. Goncourt, Charles Demailly, 191; Ébauche, 317/55–318, quoted in Brady, “L’Œuvre” de Émile Zola, 442–43.
25. Zola, L’Œuvre, 248/209.
26. Ibid., 327–28, /285–86*.
27. Zola, Ébauche, 429; Zola, L’Œuvre, 301/259*, 240–41, 296.
28. Zola, L’Œuvre, 404–5/359.
29. Ibid., 403–4/358.
CHAPTER 13 EXEMPLARITY AND PERFORMANCE IN LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN
1. See Mary Lefkowitz, The Lives of the Greek Poets, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), 129; Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz, Legend, Myth and Magic in the Image of the Artist: A Historical Experiment [1934], trans. Alastair Laing and Lottie M. Newman (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979), 8.
2. Kivy, Possessor and the Possessed, 17.
3. Dubos, Réflexions, 2:177, 178.
4. Vigny, “Dernière nuit de travail,” in Chatterton, 37–52, 44.
5. Schopenhauer, World as Will, 2:395–96; Michelet, Le Peuple, 185.
6. Baudelaire, Le Peintre de la vie moderne, in Curiosités esthétiques, 453–502 (462); “Un Mangeur d’opium,” in Les Paradis artificiels, OEuvres complètes, ed. Claude Pichois. (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1975), 2:442–517 (498)
7. Baudelaire, Le Peintre de la vie moderne, 462.
8. Baudelaire, Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris, in Curiosités esthétiques, 689–728 (719); Paradis artificiels, 498; Morale du joujou, in Curiosités esthétiques, 201–7 (203–4).
9. Balzac, Louis Lambert, 41–43, 45,
10. Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Nougaret, Les Enfans célèbres chez les peuples anciens et modernes … (Paris: Cretté, 1810), 180, 174.
11. V. de Laprade, L’Éducation homicide: plaidoyer pour l’enfance (Paris: Didier, 1868), 19, quoted by Rosemary Lloyd, The Land of Lost Content: Children and Childhood in Nineteenth-Century French Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), 7. Lloyd provides a good account of the rise of children’s literature in France, 21ff.
12. Adrien Baillet, Des enfans devenus célèbres par leurs études ou par leurs écrits: traité historique (Paris: Antoine Dezallier, 1688), n.p.
13. Nougaret, Enfans célèbres, i, ii; Pierre Blanchard, Modèles des enfans, traits d’humanité, de piété filiale, d’amour fraternel, et progrès extraordinaires de la part d’enfans de six à douze ans [1810], 10th ed. (Paris: Pierre Blanchard, 1823), xi.
14. Mme Eugénie Foa, Contes historiques pour la jeunesse (Paris: Desforges, 1843), 229.
15. Jules Caboche-Demerville, Panthéon de la jeunesse: vies des enfants célèbres de tous les temps et de tous les pays, 2 vols. (Paris: Panthéon de la jeunesse, 1842–43), 1:i, iv, ii, i–ii.
16. Mme Touchard, L’Enfance des grands hommes: étrennes dédiées à l’adolescence (Paris: F. Didot, 1821), ix.
17. Pierre Blanchard, Modèles des jeunes personnes, ou Traits remarquables, actions vertueuses, exemples de bonne conduite (Paris: Pierre Blanchard, 1811), viii.
18. Louise Colet, Enfances célèbres (Paris: L. Hachette, 1854), i–ii. Colet had failed to find a publisher willing to take her feminist epic, Poème de la femme. See Francine du Plessix Gray, Rage and Fire: A Life of Louise Colet: Pioneer Feminist, Literary Star, Flaubert’s Muse (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 204.
19. Colet, Enfances célèbres, 378.
20. Ibid., 263, 269–70.
21. Victor Delcroix, Les jeunes enfants illustres (Rouen: Mégard et compagnie, 1862), 366.
22. Ibid., 359; Colet, Enfances célèbres, 193.
CHAPTER 14 ALFRED BINET AND THE MEASUREMENT OF INTELLIGENCE
1. See preface by Lloyd M. Dunn to the reprint edition of Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon, The Development of Intelligence in Children, trans. Lewis M. Terman (Nashville: Lloyd M. Dunn, 1980), vii.
2. Catherine Morris Cox et al., The Early Mental Traits of Three Hundred Geniuses (1926). This occupies the second volume of Lewis M. Terman et al., Genetic Studies of Genius, 4 vols. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1926–47).
3. Hippolyte Taine, De l’intelligence [1870], rev. ed. (Paris: Hachette, 1883), 1:1, 2, 7.
4. Ibid., 1:373, 394.
5. On this, see Sally Shuttleworth, The Mind of the Child: Child Development in Literature, Science, and Medicine, 1840–1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
6. Bernard Perez, L’Enfant de trois à sept ans (Paris: Alcan, 1886), x.
7. Alfred Binet, L’Étude expérimentale de l’intelligence (Paris: Schleicher frères, 1903), 1, 8.
8. Alfred Binet, Les Idées modernes sur les enfants (Paris: Ernest Flammarion, 1909), 1.
9. Henry H. Goddard, “Introduction,” in Binet and Simon, Development of Intelligence in Children, 5–8 (6).
10. Binet, Les Idées modernes, 125, 9. On the background to the project, see Serge Nicolas’s preface to Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon, L’Élaboration du premier test d’intelligence (1904–1905), OEuvres choisies, ed. Serge Nicolas (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004).
11. Binet, Les Idées modernes, 117, 125.
12. Ibid., 135, 140.
13. Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon, “Le développement de l’intelligence chez les enfants,” L’Année psychologique 17 (1907): 1–94 (83).
14. Binet, Les Idées modernes, 109.
15. Binet uses this simile twice, once in “Le développement de l’intelligence” (60) and again in Les Idées modernes (136).
16. Alfred Binet and Camille Flammarion, Notice sur Jacques Inaudi, le plus extraordinaire calculateur des temps modernes (Rennes: Impr. artistique, 1925).
17. For all this, see Alfred Binet, Psychologie des grands calculateurs et joueurs d’échecs [1894], ed. Christophe Bourian and Serge Nicolas (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004), 180–92.
18. Paracelse, “Le calculateur Inaudi,” Revue hebdomadaire, 19 July 1892, 303–8.
19. http://afflictor.com/2011/04/03/old-print-article-man-with-two-brains-brooklyn-daily-eagle-1901/ (accessed 6 March 2013).
20. Binet, Psychologie des grands calculateurs, 8.
21. Ibid., 192.
CHAPTER 15 MINOU DROUET: THE PRODIGY UNDER SUSPICION
1. Paris Match, 26 November 1955 (no. 346) and 14 January 1956 (no. 353); Maurice Blanchot, “La grande tromperie,” La Nouvelle Revue Française 54 (June 1957): 1061–73, repr. in Maurice Blanchot, La Condition critique: articles 1945–1998, ed. Christophe Bident (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), 241–53 (247). Translated as “The Great Hoax” by Anne Smock, in The Blanchot Reader, ed. Michael Holland (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1995), 157–66 (161).
2. Jean Cocteau, Les Enfants terribles [1929] (Paris: Le Livre de poche, 1966), 57. On the literature of adolescence, see Justin O’Brien, The Novel of Adolescence in France: The Study of a Literary Theme (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937). O’Brien is careful to distinguish between childhood and adolescence. He identifies the years 1890–1930 as those of the “novel of adolescence,” and he limits the category to novels in which the characters remain adolescents—thus excluding Proust.
3. “À propos de l’affaire Minou Drouet,” Elle, no. 520 (12 December 1955): 32–33 (32).
4. Sabine Sicaud, Poèmes d’enfant, preface by Mme la Comtesse de Noailles (Poitiers: Les Cahiers de France, 1926), 5–7 (5, 6); Sabine Sicaud, Les Poèmes de Sabine Sicaud, ed. François Millepierres (Paris: Stock, 1958), 9.
5. Prélude à la gloire (1949) and L’Appel du destin (1952), both directed by Georges Lacombe.
6. Claude-Edmonde Magny, ed., Les Enfants célèbres (Paris: L. Mazenod, 1949).
7. The Chasse spirituelle episode is recounted in full by Bruce Morrissette, The Great Rimbaud Forgery: The Affair of La Chasse spirituelle (St. Louis, Mo.: Washington University, Committee on Publications, 1956).
8. The case is included in the list of child prodigies in history assembled in the issue of Elle dated 12 December 1955 (no. 520). The comment in L’Aurore is quoted in André Parinaud, L’Affaire Minou Drouet: petite contribution à une histoire de la Presse (Paris: Julliard, 1956), 67. Parinaud provides a detailed and largely nonpartisan account of the affaire, and includes extracts from a number of relevant documents that appeared at the time.
9. Minou Drouet, Ma vérité, ed. Jean-Max Tixier (Paris: Edition °1, LGP, 1993), 74. Françoise Mallet-Joris published her first novel, Le Rempart des Béguines, with Julliard in 1951.
10. Cited in Parinaud, L’Affaire Minou Drouet, 68.
11. Drouet, Ma vérité, 22.
12. The literary critic Robert Kemp made a similar claim in Les Nouvelles littéraires on 20 October. On this issue, see Parinaud, L’Affaire Minou Drouet, 22 and 60.
13. Quoted in Parinaud, L’Affaire Minou Drouet, 20, 22, 24.
14. Quoted in ibid., 61, 59.
15. Quoted in ibid., 140, 141.
16. See the article in L’Express, “Minou Drouet demande la confiance,” 16 November 1955, 6–7.
17. Michel de Saint-Pierre, “Minou Drouet, à vos poupées!,” quoted by Michèle Perrein in her article “L’affaire Minou Drouet: enfant prodige ou imposture prodigieuse,” Elle, no. 516 (14 November 1955): 40–43 and 100–101 (40); for the gendering of literary precocity, see vol 3. of Terman et al., Genetic Studies of Genius, 458.
18. The detail and distortions of all of this are set out by Parinaud, L’Affaire Minou Drouet, 114–22.
19. Ibid., 133.
20. Ibid., 236; Drouet, Ma vérité, 17.
21. Parinaud, L’Affaire Minou Drouet, 16.
22. Drouet, Ma vérité, 76.
23. Proust’s views on genius are discussed by Richard Terdiman in Present Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), 171ff.
CHAPTER 16 CULTURAL CRITIQUE AND THE END OF GENIUS: BARTHES, SARTRE
1. On the Soviet proposals for research into genius, see Irina Sirotkina, Diagnosing Literary Genius: A Cultural History of Psychiatry in Russia, 1880–1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 162–63. For a recent discussion of the approach to gifted children in France, see Wilfried Lignier, La petite noblesse de l’intelligence: une sociologie des enfants surdoués (Paris: La Découverte, 2012). The term “surdoué” became established during the 1970s and is regarded as politically contentious by some who prefer the term “précoce.” On Einstein’s brain, see Sandra F. Witelson, Debra L. Kigar, and Thomas Harvey, “The Exceptional Brain of Albert Einstein,” Lancet 353 (1999): 2149–53.
2. Robert Musil, The Man without Qualities, trans. Sophie Wilkins and Burton Pike (London: Picador, 1997), 42; Isaac Babel, “Awakening,” in Red Cavalry and Other Stories, trans. David McDuff, ed. Efraim Sicher (London: Penguin, 2005), 59–60. “Awakening” dates from 1930; André Breton, Manifestes du surréalisme [1962] (Paris: Gallimard, idées, 1972), 38, 42.
3. On this, see Marie Gil’s biography, Roland Barthes: au lieu de la vie (Paris: Flammarion, 2012), chap. 4.
4. “Narrative essay” is the term used by Jacques Lecarme, “Sartre palimpseste,” in Pourquoi et comment Sartre a écrit “Les mots”: genèse d’une autobiographie, ed. Michel Contat (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1996), 183–248 (193).
5. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, in OEuvres complètes, ed. Éric Marty (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1993), 1:561–722 (618); translation from Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers and Siân Reynolds, rev. ed. (London: Vintage, 2009), 77.
6. Barthes, Mythologies, 618/78, 619/79. For the iPad app, see http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/09/einstein-brain-app/ (accessed 28 September 2012).
7. Barthes, Mythologies, 657. The other pieces in Mythologies that deal with children are “Romans et enfants,” “Jouets,” and “Bichon chez les nègres.”
8. Barthes, Mythologies, 658, 661
9. Ibid., 658, 659.
10. See Annie Cohen-Solal, Sartre (Paris: Gallimard, 1985), 484–85.
11. “À propos de l’affaire Minou Drouet,” 32.
12. Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Mots [1964] (Paris: Gallimard, folio, 1974), 120, 28–29.
13. Minou was successfully operated in 1955 to correct bilateral diplopia. See Drouet, Ma vérité, 53–55.
14. Sartre, Les Mots, 72.
15. Ibid., 36. Barthes’s comment is on p. 661 of Mythologies.
16. Sartre, Les Mots, 208, 55–56.
17. Ibid., 59, 94, 124.
18. Ibid., 62. Barthes’s phrase comes from Mythologies, 661.
19. Sartre, Les Mots, 170, 172, 174. On Sartre’s childhood reading, see Philippe Lejeune, “Les souvenirs de lectures d’enfance de Sartre,” in Lectures de Sartre, ed. Claude Burgelin (Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, 1986), 51–87.
20. Simone de Beauvoir, La Cérémonie des adieux; suivi de Entretiens avec Jean-Paul Sartre, août-septembre 1974 [1981] (Paris: Gallimard, folio, 1987), 229.
CHAPTER 17 THE RETURN OF GENIUS: MAD POETS
1. For recent research, see the bibliography in Andrew Robinson, Genius: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), most of which dates since 2000. For the neuroscientific approach, see Nancy C. Andreasen, The Creating Brain: The Neuroscience of Genius (New York: Dana Press, 2005).
2. Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, trans. Katherine Jones, 2nd ed. (London: Hogarth Press, 1940), 105.
3. The poems from Hölderlin’s period of madness were published in German for the first time only in 1910, the year after Wilhelm Lange-Eichbaum’s Hölderlin: Eine Pathographie (Stuttgart: F. Enke, 1909). For Pinel’s remark, see chapter 7 above.
4. Pierre-Jean Jouve, Poèmes de la folie de Hölderlin, trans. Pierre Jean Jouve and Pierre Klossowski, introduction by Bernard Groethuysen (Paris: J.-O. Fourcade, 1930). Three of the poems in the volume and the “Première visite de Waiblinger à Hölderlin” appeared in the literary review Bifur, no. 3 (September 1929): 119–25. Two other translations of Hölderlin appeared in the same year, Hypérion ou l’Hermite en Grèce, by Joseph Delage, and La Mort d’Empédocle by André Babelon.
5. Martin Heidegger, “Hölderlin et l’essence de la poésie,” in Qu’est-ce que la métaphysique?, trans. Henry Corbin (Paris: NRF/Gallimard, 1951), 231–52; Maurice Blanchot, “Hölderlin,” L’Observateur, no. 17 (3 August 1950): 19. The reference is to Ernest Tonnelat, L’œuvre poétique et la pensée religieuse de Hölderlin (1950). A biography by Pierre Bertaux, Hölderlin, Essai de biographie intérieure (1936) had portrayed Hölderlin’s insanity as a cover for political radicalism.
6. Maurice Blanchot, “La Folie par excellence,” Critique 45 (February 1951): 99–118. Jouve’s lectures were broadcast in June and July 1951. All references to Blanchot’s essay are to the preface in Karl Jaspers, Strindberg et Van Gogh, Swedenborg, Hölderlin: Étude psychiatrique comparative, trans. Hélène Naef [1953] (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1990). Blanchot’s comment appears on p. 28. In 1970 Blanchot appended a note to the essay, reevaluating the term “folie” as requiring “an interrogative position,” so that the very assertion “Hölderlin was mad” has to be followed immediately by the question “but was he?”; ibid., 30.
7. Pierre Jean Jouve, Folie et génie (Paris: Fata Morgana, 1983), 51.
8. Ibid., 25.
9. Quoted in ibid., 47, 56.
10. Ibid., 39; Pierre Jean Jouve, Sueur de sang, in OEuvre, ed. Jean Starobinski (Paris: Mercure de France, 1987), 1:199, 196; Pierre Jean Jouve, En Miroir, in OEuvre, 2:1051–1191 (1123). On Jouve’s depressive tendencies, see Béatrice Bonhomme, Pierre Jean Jouve: la quête intérieure: biographie (Croissy-Beaubourg: Aden, 2008).
11. Pierre Jean Jouve, Apologie du poète (suivi de) Six lectures [1947] (Fontfroide-le-Haut: Fata Morgana, 1987), 39–40.
12. David Gascoyne, Hölderlin’s Madness (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1938). The book is remarkably similar to Jouve’s volume, consisting of an introductory essay followed by English versions of many of the Hölderlin poems translated by Jouve, with the addition of a few poems of his own. Gascoyne also translated some of Jouve’s poetry: Pierre Jean Jouve, Despair Has Wings: Selected Poems of Pierre Jean Jouve, trans. David Gascoyne, ed. with an introductory essay by Roger Scott (London: Enitharmon Press, 2007). “Moments d’une psychanalyse” was first published in the NRF in March 1933, no. 234. It is included in vol. 2 of the OEuvre. See the editorial note in vol. 2, 1553.
13. Margaret Callander says of this collection that it “seems to lack the usual coherence of Jouve’s poetry.” Margaret Callander, The Poetry of Pierre Jean Jouve (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1965), 262. The title of the collection may be an allusion to the last poem in Rimbaud’s Illuminations from which the epigraph to my own book is taken.
14. Jouve, Folie et génie, 25, 26, 57–58, quoting from Blanchot, “La Folie par excellence,” 17.
15. Blanchot, “La Folie par excellence,” 18, 19, 17.
16. Ibid., 13, 12, 11.
17. Maurice Blanchot, “Freud,” Nouvelle Revue Française, no. 45 (September 1956): 484–96. The article was later published as “La parole analytique” in L’Entretien infini (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), 343–54 (343, 351). On Blanchot’s medical training, see Christophe Bident, Maurice Blanchot: partenaire invisible (Paris: Champ Vallon, 1998), 49.
18. Jouve, Folie et génie, 27; Blanchot, “La Folie par excellence,” 23.
CHAPTER 18 JULIA KRISTEVA AND FEMALE GENIUS
1. Julia Kristeva, Le Génie féminin: la vie, la folie, les mots, 3. Colette [2002] (Paris: Gallimard, folio essais, 2008), 539.
2. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition [1958], rev. ed., introduced by Margaret Canovan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 210–11.
3. Julia Kristeva, Le Génie féminin: la vie, la folie, les mots, 1. Hannah Arendt [1999] (Paris: Gallimard, folio essais, 2003), 8.
4. Kristeva, Colette, 9, 540. See Julia Kristeva, Les nouvelles maladies de l’âme (Paris: Fayard, 1993).
5. Kristeva, Arendt, 26, 76.
6. Julia Kristeva, Le Génie féminin: la vie, la folie, les mots, 2. Melanie Klein [2000] (Paris: Gallimard, folio essais, 2006), 22, 69.
7. Kristeva, Arendt, 277–78, my emphasis.
8. Kristeva, Colette, 178, 30.
9. Ibid., 15, 42.
10. Kristeva, Arendt, 9; Kristeva, Colette, 540.
11. Hugo, William Shakespeare, 377. See chapter 6 above.
12. Kristeva, Klein, 24–25.
13. Ibid., 252, 253, 254. The reference to mental hermaphroditism is in Kristeva, Colette, 564.
14. Kristeva, Colette, 566.
15. Kristeva, Klein, 395; Kristeva, Colette, 543, 566.
CHAPTER 19 DERRIDA, CIXOUS, AND THE IMPOSTOR
1. Jacques Derrida, Genèses, généalogies, genres et le génie: Les secrets de l’archive (Paris: Galilée, 2003), 9.
2. Ibid., 11, 12.
3. Ibid., 14, 13.
4. Ibid., 32.
5. Ibid., 87, 88. This situation is analyzed extensively by Derrida in his Donner le temps, I. La Fausse monnaie (Paris: Galilée, 1998).
6. Derrida, Genèses, généalogies, genres et le génie, 55.
7. Ibid., 57–58; Hélène Cixous, Manhattan: lettres de la préhistoire (Paris: Galilée, 2002), 77 and passim.
8. Cixous, Manhattan, 84, 85.
9. Ibid., 196, 215.
10. Ibid., 217, 222, 231 (Cixous omits punctuation here in the original French).
11. Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas [1933] (London: Arrow Books, 1960), 9. On Stein and the idea of genius, see Barbara Will, Gertrude Stein, Modernism, and the Problem of “Genius” (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000).
12. Alex Danchev, Georges Braque: A Life (New York: Arcade, 2005), 226.
13. Salvador Dali, Journal d’un génie, ed. Michel Déon (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1964), 13. English translation from Diary of a Genius, trans. Richard Howard, ed. Michel Déon (London: Picador, 1976), 11.
14. Plato, “Ion,” 530c–d.
15. Cixous, Manhattan, 232.
16. Derrida, Genèses, généalogies, genres et le génie, 81, 67–68.
17. Ibid., 83, 11.