Jules Michelet

born
Aug. 21, 1798, Paris, France
died Feb. 9, 1874, Hyères
French nationalist historian best known
for his monumental Histoire de France
(1833–67). Michelet’s method, an attempt
to resurrect the past by immersing his
own personality in his narrative,
resulted in a historical synthesis of
great dramatic power.
Michelet was the son of a modest printer
who managed to give Jules an education.
A brilliant student, Michelet at 29 was
teaching history and philosophy at the
École Normale Supérieure. He had already
published textbooks and a translation
(1827) of Giambattista Vico’s Scienza
nuova (“New Science”). The July
Revolution (1830) confirmed Vico’s
influence on Michelet in stressing man’s
own part in the making of history,
conceived as a continuous struggle of
human freedom against fatality. This,
the main theme of the Introduction à
l’histoire universelle (1831), was to
underlie Michelet’s later writings.
After
the Histoire romaine, 2 vol. (1831),
Michelet devoted himself to medieval and
modern history; his appointment as head
of the historical section of the Record
Office in the same year provided him
with unique resources for carrying out
his monumental life’s work, the Histoire
de France. The first six volumes
(1833–43) stop at the end of the Middle
Ages; they include the “Tableau de la
France,” in which the emergence of
France as a nation is seen as a victory
over racial and geographic determinism;
they also include his treatment of Joan
of Arc as the very soul of France and
the living symbol of his own patriotic
and democratic ideals.
Michelet deliberately threw his intimate
self into his narrative, convinced that
this was the way to achieve the
historian’s ultimate aim: the
resurrection (or re-creation) of the
past. Such a resurrection must be
integral: all the elements of the
past—artistic, religious, economic, as
well as political—must be brought back,
intertwined, as they once were, in a
living synthesis. Arbitrary and
overambitious as the undertaking seems,
Michelet’s compassionate genius and
romantic imagination enabled him to
conjure up an effective evocation,
unsurpassed for poetic and dramatic
power.
Toward
the end of this period, which was marked
by private crises reflected in his work
(the death of his first wife, in 1839,
and of his friend Mme Dumesnil, in 1842,
cast shadows over whole periods of his
Histoire de France), Michelet turned
away from Christianity and began to
profess a messianic belief in democratic
progress. His increasing hostility to
the church, expressed in his lectures at
the Collège de France, eventually
brought him into conflict with the
Jesuits and caused his lectures to be
suspended in January 1848.
A month
later, the revolution that he had
heralded in Le Peuple (1846) seemed to
bring about the realization of his
dreams. But they were soon shattered: in
1852 Michelet, having refused allegiance
to the Second Empire, lost his posts. In
1847 he had interrupted the sequence of
the Histoire de France to write the
Histoire de la révolution française, 7
vol. (1847–53). He visualized the French
Revolution as a climax, as the triumph
of la Justice over la Grâce (by which he
meant both Christian dogma and the
arbitrary power of the monarchy). These
volumes, written at a feverish pace, are
a vivid, impassioned chronicle.
Michelet then resumed the Histoire de
France from the Renaissance to the eve
of the revolution (11 vol., 1855–67).
Unfortunately, his hatred of priests and
kings, his hasty or abusive treatment of
documents, and his mania for symbolic
interpretation continually distort these
volumes into hallucinations or
nightmares. Also thus distorted is La
Sorcière (1862), an apology for witches
considered as godforsaken souls, victims
of the antinatural interdictions of the
church.
A new
and happier inspiration produced a
series of books on nature: L’Oiseau
(1856); L’Insecte (1858); La Mer (1861);
La Montagne (1868). They reflect the
influence of his second marriage to
Athénaïs Mialaret, 30 years his junior,
in 1849; written in a lyrical vein, they
contain some of the most beautiful pages
of a supreme prose writer. L’Amour
(1858) and La Femme (1860), written
under the same influence, are erotic and
didactic.
The
Franco-German War of 1870 shattered
Michelet’s idealism and his illusions
about Germany. After his death, in 1874,
his widow tampered with his diaries, and
their publication as a whole was begun
only in 1959 (Journal, vol. 1, 1959,
vol. 2, 1962; Écrits de jeunesse, 1959).
They record his travels through Europe,
and, above all, they give a key to his
personality and illuminate the
relationship between his intimate
experiences and his work.
Jean J. Seznec