Novel
Obermann
Étienne Pivert de Senancour · 1833
Opening lines
Il ne s’est passé que vingt jours depuis que je vous ai écrit de Lyon.
Only twenty days have passed since I wrote to you from Lyon.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from fr.wikisource.org
Synopsis
A disillusioned young man of twenty leaves Paris for Switzerland and seeks, in solitude and mountain landscapes, a peace that eludes him. He writes to a correspondent, whose replies we never read, long letters that are part essay, part private diary. Steeped in Rousseau, he examines boredom, melancholy and the sense of a useless existence, in which nothing is accomplished.
Context
The novel appeared in Paris in 1804, from Cérioux, in two volumes, and went unnoticed. The Romantic generation discovered it in the 1830s: Sainte-Beuve introduced the 1833 reissue, revised and expanded by the author, and George Sand in turn wrote a preface for it. The Romantics saw in its hero the figure of the mal du siècle, made of solitude, boredom and doubt. The book is often cited under the spelling Obermann, with two n's, which its English translations also use.
Who it is for
A long epistolary novel, close to personal meditation, which lends itself to reading in fragments; readers of Rousseau will find themselves on familiar ground.
Prizes and reception
Praised by Sainte-Beuve and by George Sand, it inspired Liszt to write a piano piece, Vallée d'Obermann.
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