Xavier de Maistre

Biography

Born in a family from the Savoyard aristocracy, Xavier de Maistre is the brother of the philosopher counter-revolutionary Joseph de Maistre. He emigrates in Russia when France occupies Savoy in 1792, and settles with Saint-Pétersbourg. He lives initially under the protection of the general Souvorov, but this last having been disgraced, he survives thanks to painting, and its landscapes are a certain success.

Its situation changes with the arrival with Saint-Pétersbourg of its brother, extraordinary envoy of king de Sardaigne: Xavier is named director of the library and the Musée of Admiralty in 1805. Thereafter, it is useful in the army, arrives at the rank of general, and fights in particular at the time of the Guerre of the Caucasus.

At the time of the French edition of his book the Siberian Young person (1825) it makes a long voyage to Paris and in Savoy, at the time which it discovers that it was more known than it thought it. The poet Alphonse of Lamartine dedicates to him in 1826, the Return , an epistle in worms which is entirely devoted to him. He evokes there in the passing his family ties with him, by his Césarine sister, died in 1824 and which had married Xavier de Vignet, nephew of Xavier de Maistre. Speaking in praise of his relative, it ensures that its genius will be worth a durable glory from generation to generation to him.

They will reappear for you until your last days;
What do I say? When death, under a green mausoleum,
Returning a little ground in your exiled shade,
Will cover grass the son of the valley,
Friends? your memory will always keep some:
They will come there to cry and this grace attic,
And this naive accent, tender, melancholic person,
Who without asking them made stream our tears;
Their young virtues you will nourish the flame;
And feeling better, they will say: It is its heart
Who of its soft writings passed in our hearts! |Alphonse of Lamartine|The Return

After some other voyages in Europe, it finishes its life with Saint-Pétersbourg.

Literary work

Its most known work remains the Voyage around my room , written in 1794, autobiographical account of form which tells the stops of a young officer, constrained to remain in its room during forty-two days, and which his/her brother makes publish, whereas itself did not see the interest of it. It diverts the kind of the account of voyage, which gives to this novel a clearly parodic dimension, but announces also the upheavals of the romanticism, with the constant interest brought to ego. The Voyage is remarkable from its lightness, and the imagination with which the author is played it of his reader, in the line of Laurence Sterne.

In 1811, it writes Leprous city of Aoste , a small work of about thirty pages, of a great stylistic simplicity, where is exposed a dialog between leprous and a soldier. Later, he writes two other novels, the Siberian Young person in 1825 and the Prisoners of the Caucasus .

Voyage around my room (1794). Republication: Thousand and One Nights, Paris, 2002 (postface of Joel Gayraud).
night Forwarding around my room
the Leprous one of the city of Aoste (1811). History of a leprous recluse in a tower and which remembers happy times of its youth. Its only happiness is the vision of the Alps.
the Siberian Young person (1825)
Prisoners of the Caucasus (1825)

Quotation

Through being unhappy one ends up becoming ridiculous|Xavier de Maistre|Night forwarding around my room
The memories of last happiness are the wrinkles of the heart|Xavier de Maistre|Night forwarding around my room
A good imitation is a new invention|Xavier de Maistre
Though the power of God is as visible in the creation of an ant as in that of the whole universe, the large spectacle of the mountains imposes some more on my directions: I then to see these enormous masses, covered with eternal ices, without testing a religious astonishment. I especially like to contemplate the distant mountains which merge with the sky in the horizon. As well as future, the distance gives birth to in me the feeling from the hope. there exists perhaps a distant ground where, at one time with a future, I will be able to taste this happiness finally for which I sigh, and that a secret instinct unceasingly presents to me like possible|Xavier de Maistre|The Leprous one of the city of Aoste

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