History and Genius: The Narcotic, Erotic, and Baroque Life of Germaine de Stael

Abstract

The tendency of biography is to present the portrait of a hero whose unified character has been purged of contradictory or confusing material. The virtues of such a presentation are legion, allowing us to identify with a great character, to find coherence in life, and to imagine so vividly that we become politically or intellectually inspired to new forms of action. In the case of Germaine de Stael the biographical unity imputed to her life centers on her enlightened constitutionalism and liberalism, both of which are bound up with the proclivities of her parents and manifested in her own political writing and activities.' Such a unity can have its disadvantages, however, by encouraging us to colonize a biographical space or to imagine someone in inappropriately clear ways that do a real disservice to complexity. For instance, the sexual promiscuity that unified Christopher Herold's Mistress to an Age did de Stael the latter kind of disservice.2 Taking account of these advantages and pitfalls, I would like to place alongside the liberal unity and the sexual unity yet a third biographical interpretation-that of de Stahl as a genius at doing history. It was one that she herself proposed and that inspired writers and feminists for almost the entire nineteenth century. Yet despite the strong figuration given genius in this exploration of de Stael's writing, I offer this interpretation not as