Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, Duke of

SAINT-SIMON, Louis de Rouvroy, Duke of. - B. in Paris on 15 Jan. 1675, d. there on 2 March 1755. He fought in Belgium and in Germany, then in 1702 he abandoned his military career and, after the death of the regent duke of Orléans, the court as well.

A peer of France, S.-S. was proud to the point of vanity of his birth and his rank and of the feudal prestige of the nobility. From as early as 1694 he began to write the Mémoires in scattered notes, which later served him for the more orderly redaction (1740-50). However, the manuscript was seized after his death; a part of it was subsequently printed, derived from an imperfect copy, until a complete edition could be had (2 vols., Paris 1829-30). S.-S. wrote the Mémoires more to give vent to his nostalgias and his personal passions than to accomplish the work of a historian; therefore in them many pieces of information are inaccurate and many facts even altered. But the Mémoires have a twofold value: the skill in bringing back to life the personages he knew and the dramatic power in evoking the scenes he witnessed; a classicist but without scruples of purism, he always adapts the word and the construction to the thought and not to the rules of grammar or of rhetoric.

• Comédie humaine • of S.-S., ibid. 1914. The best ed. of the Mémoires is the one edited by A. de Boisdale, ibid. 1879-1930.

Roberto Palmarocchi