MAISTRE, FRANÇOIS-XAVIER DE

MAISTRE, FRANÇOIS-XAVIER de. — Savoyard writer, brother of Giuseppe, born at Chambéry on 8 November 1763 into a noble family of magistrates with legitimist and deeply Catholic traditions; died at Strelnia (near Saint Petersburg) on 13 June 1852. He spent his youth partly in Savoy and partly in Piedmont. Following the invasion of the Kingdom of Sardinia by the French revolutionary army, he left his homeland, like many other officers, and settled in Russia. He fought in Georgia a-

MAIORCA, DIOCESI di — Detail of the portal known as the “Mirador” of the Cathedral (late 14th century) — Majorca.

gainst the insurgent populations, took part in the campaign of 1812 against Napoleon, and after the Battle of Leipzig left the military career with the rank of general. In 1813 he married Princess Sophie Zagriatsky. In 1826 he returned to Savoy, and subsequently stayed for a long time in Italy, where he lost the last two children he had left. In 1839, after a journey to France, he returned to Russia, where he died.

His works display a remarkable variety of aspects, in which there is the common foundation of a spontaneous and deeply felt realism. Voyage autour de ma chambre (composed when de M. was in Turin during forty days of strict arrest and published at Lausanne in 1795) is a graceful fantasy in which eighteenth-century taste is combined with Romantic inspiration, whereas in Expédition nocturne autour de ma chambre (in Oeuvres complètes de X. de M., Paris 1825) the Romantic element is heightened by a melancholy lyricism. Le lépreux de la cité d'Aoste (published together with a new edition of Voyage at Saint Petersburg in 1811) is inspired by a lofty Christian conception (de M. lived at Aosta from 1793 to 1797). In Russia he composed two novellas: Les prisonniers du Caucase and La jeune sibérienne (both published in the aforementioned edition of Oeuvres complètes de X. de M.). The first, which unfolds in a wartime atmosphere with intensely dramatic scenes, in all probability inspired Tolstoy’s Prigioniero al Caucaso. The second is the plain and moving account of the true story of a young Russian girl who, with the sole help of her faith in God, travels on foot to Moscow from Siberia to ask the Tsar for a pardon for her innocent father. These two last works, together with fragments of three other sto-

MAIORCA, DIOCESI di — Side of the Cathedral (late 14th century — early 15th century). Majorca.

ries that de M. never completed (published posthumously in E. Réaume, Oeuvres inédites de X. de M. Premiers essais. Fragments et correspondance, Paris 1877), constitute a realistic depiction of the Russian world in its social, military, and religious aspects, anticipating the magnificent portrayal in Tolstoy’s novels, especially Guerra e pace. He also wrote various poems and a free imitation of some of Kryloff’s fables. He contributed to his brother Giuseppe’s Les soirées de St-Pétersbourg with the pictorial description of its opening. Several scientific memoirs of his are also held in the Bibliothèque de Genève, as well as communications in the Atti della R. Accademia delle scienze di Torino.

BIBLI.: The complete bibliography up to 1918 is contained in A. Berthier, X. de M., étude biographique et littéraire, Paris-Liom [1918]. Cf. also: P. P. Trompeo, Nell'Italia romantica sulle orme di Stendhal (Studi di letteratura e d'arte diretti da P. P. Trompeo, 1), Rome 1924, pp. 169–80; id., s. V. in Enc. Ital., XXI (1934), p. 973; S. Ortiz, Una reminiscenza di X. de M. in « Cuore » del De Amicis, Rome 1932; R. De Mattei, Viaggi in libreria (Itinerari, 1), Florence 1941 (on Voyage autour de ma chambre), pp. 89–94.

Matilde Mazzolani