Sévigné, Marie de Rabutin Chantal, Marquise de (SÉVIGNÉ, MARIE DE RABUTIN CHANTAL, M.ME DE)

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

SÉVIGNÉ, MARIE DE RABUTIN CHANTAL, M.me de. — French writer, born in Paris on 5 February 1626, died at Grignan on 17 April 1696.

Orphaned in her early years, she was cared for by her maternal uncle, Philippe de Coulanges, abbot of Livry. She studied Italian and Spanish and acquired a classical education. In 1644 she married the marquis Henri de Sévigné, by whom she had two children: in 1646 Françoise, who in 1669 married the count of Grignan, later the King’s lieutenant general in Provence; and in 1648 Charles, who caused her some distress through his dissolute conduct. Widowed in 1651, she settled in Paris, where she devoted herself to caring for her children, without, however, neglecting social life, and with occasional attendance at court. Certain disagreements in temperament with her daughter and some hint of scandal, promptly suppressed, constituted the major misfortunes of her existence, which was the usual one of noble Frenchwomen in the seventeenth century, accompanied by the sincere and assiduous practice of the Catholic faith.

Her literary sensibility had been formed essentially by Corneille, Molière, and La Fontaine. She held Ariosto and Tasso in high regard, as well as s. Agostino and Pascal. Her work, consisting of a vast correspondence—more than 1,500 letters, most of them addressed to her daughter—is of exceptional interest for the history of the customs of the aristocratic society of her age, as well as for its intrinsic artistic merits, thanks to a keen psychological insight and a certain vividness, at times finely humorous, in the portrayal of situations and figures. Because of her exemplary style, she was considered, almost on the same level as La Fontaine and Molière, among the greatest French writers of the seventeenth century. Possessed of a firm morality, she is nevertheless not free from a certain hardness of heart, owing to a frequent lack of human compassion, which sometimes makes her insensitive to misfortunes unrelated to her aristocratic society.

BIBL.: the most noteworthy ed. of the works (edited by Monmerqué) in the Collection des grands écrivains de la France, 14 vols. in-8 and an album, Paris 1862–66; completed by the Lettres inédites, edited by Ch. Capmas, 2 vols., there 1872. Studies: V. Walckenaer, Mémoires sur la vie et les écrits de M.me de S., 5 vols., Paris 1842–52; G. Boissier, M.me de S., there 1887; E. Faquet, M.me de S., there 1910; C. Friedmann, La cultura italiana di M.me de S., in Giorn. stor. lett. it., 9 (1912), pp. 1–72; C. Gazier, M.me de S., Paris 1934; A. Stanley, M.me de S., her letters and her world, London 1946. On the religious sentiment of M.me de S., cf.: J. Calvet, La religion de M.me de S., in Vie catholique en France et à l'étranger of 6 February 1926; C. Gazier, M.me de S. et Port-Royal, in Le Correspondant, 1926, issue 302, pp. 508–523; J. Fonany, M.me de S. et le thème de la mort, in Études classiques, 4 (1935), pp. 390–410.