Constant de Rebecque, Benjamin-Henri - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. IV, p. 252

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

CONSTANT DE REBECQUE, BENJAMIN-HENRI. — Writer, polemicist, and orator, born in Lausanne on 25 October 1767 to a Protestant family, died in Paris on 8 December 1830. He studied at Oxford, Erlangen, and Edinburgh, and at the age of twelve had already composed a heroic poem in five cantos, Les chevaliers. A restless and passionate spirit, avid for emotions and pleasures, endowed with a fervid imagination but skeptical and irresolute, he led an adventurous and troubled life, especially because of his active participation in the political movements of his time and the violent romantic passions in which he became embroiled. In 1794 he met A. de Staël in Lausanne, who exercised a great influence on his life. He went into exile with her, and in Weimar met Goethe and Schiller.

The fruit of this encounter was a mediocre translation of Schiller’s Wallenstein. During his exile, C. wrote De la religion considérée dans sa source, ses formes et ses développements (5 vols., 1824–31), a considerable work for its anti-utilitarian conception of religion, although the progress of the human spirit is conceived therein as the autonomy of religion from Revelation, from the authority of the Church, and even from reasoning, the intimate sense of each person, feeling, being sufficient. For this reason the work was placed on the Index (decree of 11 June 1827). In 1807, in only fifteen days, he wrote his masterpiece, Adolphe, which, subsequently reworked, was published in London in 1816. It is a predominantly autobiographical novel: the story of an unhappy love, destroyed by the clash of temperaments, which the writer analyzes in all its phases with a

depth and sobriety worthy of the greatest classical authors. The same gifts as psychologist and writer are found in the Journal intime and the Cahier rouge, published respectively in 1874 and 1907, of extreme importance for their penetrating introspective analysis, marked by a distinctly Romantic character. Numerous are the political and literary writings that C. collected above all in the Discours (1828) and the Mélanges de politique et de littérature (1829). Of fundamental importance is the Cours de politique constitutionnelle, an extensive attempt to develop the concept of liberty as a dialectic of thought and action. Evocative is the anti-Napoleonic pamphlet De l'esprit de conquête et de l'usurpation (1814), rich in the appeal of legitimacy and, at the same time, of the most convinced liberalism.

BIBL.: Works: The Oeuvres politiques of B. C. were published by Ch. Louandre, Paris 1874; the Lettres à M. me de Récamier by M. me Lenormant, ibid. 1882; the Lettres à sa famille by J. H. Messos, ibid. 1888; that à M. me de Charrère, in Revue de Paris, 1894. Literature: V. Glachant, B. C. sous l'oeil du guet, Paris 1906 (with bibliography); G. Rudler, La jeunesse de B. C., ibid. 1909; M. Ortiz, introduction to the translation of Adolphe, Florence 1923; J. Hyster, Les romans de l'individu: C., Sainte Beuve..., ibid. 1928; P. L. Léon, B. C., ibid. 1930; A. Romieu, B. C. et l'esprit européen, ibid. 1933; G. Rudler, «Adolphe de B. C.», ibid. 1935; W. Bach, B. C. und die Politik, 1767-1802. Eine psychologische-historische Studie, Leipzig 1936; F. Neri, Adolfo ed Ellenora, in Saggi di lett. ital., franc., ingl., Naples 1936, pp. 181–188; A. Fabre-Luce, B. C., Leipzig 1939; H. Gouzelot, L'idée de la liberté dans la pensée de B. C., Melun 1942.

Maria Teresa Sposato