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Oberman: Lettres publiées par M. Senancour - Tome I
BnF collection ebooks - "Il ne s'est passé que vingt jours depuis que je vous écrivis de Lyon. Je n'annonçais aucun projet nouveau, je n'en avais pas ; et maintenant j'ai tout quitté, me voici sur une terre étrangère."
174 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 1, 2013
1 person want to read
About the author
Étienne Pivert de Senancour
32 books12 followersÉtienne-Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Ignace Pivert de Senancour est un essayiste et philosophe français. Il est le père de Virginie de Senancour.
Étienne-Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Ignace Pivert de Senancour was a French essayist and philosopher. Senancour was tinged to some extent with the older philosophe form of free-thinking, and had no sympathy with the Catholic reaction. Having no resources but his pen, Senancour was driven to hack-work during the period which elapsed between his return to France (1803) and his death at Saint-Cloud; but some of the charm of Obermann is to be found in the Libres Méditations d'un solitaire inconnu. Thiers and Villemain successively obtained for Senancour from Louis Philippe pensions which enabled him to pass his last days in comfort. Senancour also authored the comedic drama Valombré (1807), and late in life wrote a second novel in letters entitled Isabelle (1833). He composed his own epitaph, "Eternité, sois mon asile".
Senancour is immortalized for English readers in two poems by Matthew Arnold entitled "Stanzas in Memory of the Author of Obermann" and "Obermann Once More."
Obermann has been translated into English three times: in its entirety by A. E. Waite (1903) and J. Anthony Barnes (1910), and in selections by Jessie Peabody Frothingham (1901).
He is the father of Virginie de Senancour.
Étienne-Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Ignace Pivert de Senancour was a French essayist and philosopher. Senancour was tinged to some extent with the older philosophe form of free-thinking, and had no sympathy with the Catholic reaction. Having no resources but his pen, Senancour was driven to hack-work during the period which elapsed between his return to France (1803) and his death at Saint-Cloud; but some of the charm of Obermann is to be found in the Libres Méditations d'un solitaire inconnu. Thiers and Villemain successively obtained for Senancour from Louis Philippe pensions which enabled him to pass his last days in comfort. Senancour also authored the comedic drama Valombré (1807), and late in life wrote a second novel in letters entitled Isabelle (1833). He composed his own epitaph, "Eternité, sois mon asile".
Senancour is immortalized for English readers in two poems by Matthew Arnold entitled "Stanzas in Memory of the Author of Obermann" and "Obermann Once More."
Obermann has been translated into English three times: in its entirety by A. E. Waite (1903) and J. Anthony Barnes (1910), and in selections by Jessie Peabody Frothingham (1901).
He is the father of Virginie de Senancour.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 22, 2025
I would love to write about Obermann, however, É.P. De Senancours perfectly encapsulates him in this direct quote:
Even here, it is only the evening that I love. The dawn gladdens me for a moment; I fancy I could fell the charm of it if the day that is to follow were not bound to be so long! I certainly have a free domain to wander in, but it is not wild and impressive enough. its features are tame, its rocks small and uninteresting, the vegetation as a rule lacks the luxuriance and profusion I like to see; one never catches here the murmur of a torrent far down in the depths; it is a land of plains. Nothing burdens me here; nothing satisfies me. I fancy, if anything, my boredom increases; simply because I have not enough to suffer. I am happier then, you think? Not a bit of it; to suffer and to be unhappy are not at all the same thing, no more than enjoyment is identical with happiness.
I am delightfully circumstanced, and yet I live a melancholy life. I could not be better off than I am here: free, undistracted, well in health, unyoked from business, unconcerned about a future from which I expect nothing, and leaving behind without regret a past I have not enjoyed. But here is within me a persistent unrest, a yearning I cannot define, imperative and absorbing, which takes me out of the sphere of perishable creatures... No, it is not the yearning to love; you are mistaken there, as I once was mistaken myself. The interval is wide enough between the emptiness of my heart and the love it has so eagerly desired, but the distance between what I am and what I want to be is infinite. I do not want to enjoy possession; I want hope, I should like to know. I need limitless illusions, receding before me to keep me always under their spell. What use to me is anything that can end? The hour which will arrive in sixty years' time is already close at hand. I have no liking for anything that takes its rise, draws near, arrives and is no more. I want a good, a dream, in fact a hope that is ever in advance, ever beyond me, greater than my expectation itself, greater than the things which pass away. I would like to be pure intelligence, I would like the eternal order of the world... And yet, thirty years ago, that order was, and I had no existence.
worthless and accidental creature of a day, I used not to exist, and soon I shall exist no more. I discover with surprise that my thought is greater than my being, and when I consider that my life is absurd in my own eyes, I lose my way in hopeless darkness. Truly, happier is he who fells trees and burns charcoal, and flies to holy water when the thunder peals. He lives like the brute. Nay; for he sings at his work. I shall never know his peace, and yet I shall pass like him. His life will glide along with time, but mine is led astray and hurried on by excitement and unrest, and by the phantoms of an unknown greatness
Even here, it is only the evening that I love. The dawn gladdens me for a moment; I fancy I could fell the charm of it if the day that is to follow were not bound to be so long! I certainly have a free domain to wander in, but it is not wild and impressive enough. its features are tame, its rocks small and uninteresting, the vegetation as a rule lacks the luxuriance and profusion I like to see; one never catches here the murmur of a torrent far down in the depths; it is a land of plains. Nothing burdens me here; nothing satisfies me. I fancy, if anything, my boredom increases; simply because I have not enough to suffer. I am happier then, you think? Not a bit of it; to suffer and to be unhappy are not at all the same thing, no more than enjoyment is identical with happiness.
I am delightfully circumstanced, and yet I live a melancholy life. I could not be better off than I am here: free, undistracted, well in health, unyoked from business, unconcerned about a future from which I expect nothing, and leaving behind without regret a past I have not enjoyed. But here is within me a persistent unrest, a yearning I cannot define, imperative and absorbing, which takes me out of the sphere of perishable creatures... No, it is not the yearning to love; you are mistaken there, as I once was mistaken myself. The interval is wide enough between the emptiness of my heart and the love it has so eagerly desired, but the distance between what I am and what I want to be is infinite. I do not want to enjoy possession; I want hope, I should like to know. I need limitless illusions, receding before me to keep me always under their spell. What use to me is anything that can end? The hour which will arrive in sixty years' time is already close at hand. I have no liking for anything that takes its rise, draws near, arrives and is no more. I want a good, a dream, in fact a hope that is ever in advance, ever beyond me, greater than my expectation itself, greater than the things which pass away. I would like to be pure intelligence, I would like the eternal order of the world... And yet, thirty years ago, that order was, and I had no existence.
worthless and accidental creature of a day, I used not to exist, and soon I shall exist no more. I discover with surprise that my thought is greater than my being, and when I consider that my life is absurd in my own eyes, I lose my way in hopeless darkness. Truly, happier is he who fells trees and burns charcoal, and flies to holy water when the thunder peals. He lives like the brute. Nay; for he sings at his work. I shall never know his peace, and yet I shall pass like him. His life will glide along with time, but mine is led astray and hurried on by excitement and unrest, and by the phantoms of an unknown greatness
Displaying 1 of 1 review