AMIEL, HENRI-FRÉDÉRIC. - Thinker and poet, b. in Geneva on 27 Sept. 1821 and d. there on 11 May 1881. Professor of aesthetics and then of philosophy at that University, he felt keenly the influence of German pessimistic philosophy, but, having failed to organize his speculations firmly, he left us only a harvest of acute and penetrating observations. Like Heraclitus, to whom he traces back through German thought, he affirms that "all life is a struggle of contending forces, enclosed within the limits of an equilibrium": the law of the Universe is activity, that is, struggle, and since every ideal, once realized, resolves itself only in disappointment, the unhappiness of life is inevitable: therefore, as Bourget says, "il tenta de s'enfuir dans le rêve, ayant trop souffert de la vie". The feeling of universal sorrow and of impenetrable mystery resolves itself in him at times into moments of quietistic calm, at times into mystical exaltation. Between philosophy and religion there is for A. a difference but not an opposition; in Christianity, however, whose full spiritual force he felt, he sees only the teaching of Jesus and not a positive religion founded by Him, to which He gave obligatory precepts and rites; for his religion has the Absolute as its God and order as its moral law. Nevertheless, hindered by his intellectualistic pessimism, he never came to possess God, toward whom he was driven by an intimate need.

A mediocre author of verses, mostly cold and labored, he wrote many of them, from Grains de mil (1854) to Pensieroso (1858), to Jour à jour (1877). A. can often be a poet in prose: the Journal intime, to which his name is principally attached, is remarkable not only for the penetrating subtlety of its self-analysis but for the many pages in which religious fervor expresses itself in inflamed and poetic prose.

Of the Journal there are partial editions, one from Geneva (1883-84), the other appearing in 1923 in Paris. Recently B. Bouvier published La jeunesse de H. F. Amiel. Lettres à sa famille, ses amis, ses amies, pour servir d'introduction au « Journal intime » (1837-49), Paris 1936.

Bibliography9 works

BIBL.: B. Bouvier, La religion de H.-F. A., Paris 1893; P. Bourget, H.-F. A. Nouveaux essais de psychologie contemporaine, Paris 1899, pp. 251-304; G. Salvadori, E. Fed. A. e gli effetti della critica negotica, Rome 1906; P. Arcari, Federico A., Genoa 1912; G. B. Marchesi, Il « Pensieroso », Studio su F. A., Genoa 1912; C. Pascal, Epicurei e mistici, Catania 1914, pp. 109-42; A. Severino, Il sentimento religioso di F. A., in Quaderni di Bilychinis, 3 (1921); F. Mauriac, De quelques cœurs inquiets, Paris 1925; F. Neri, Il pallido A., in Saggi di letteratura italiana, francese, inglese, Naples 1936, pp. 119-27.

Joë Scudieri Ruggieri

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Amiel, Henri-Frédéric

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