Two-faced Janus of early French romanticism: Pierre Simon Ballanche as an esthetician and writer

Mankovskaya Nadezda Borisovna Doctor of Philosophy Chief Researcher at Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences 119019, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Goncharnaya, 12 mankowskaya.nadia@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

The aesthetics of Pierre Simon Ballanche (1776-1847), a thinker and writer, a member of the French Academy, who stood at the origins of French Romanticism [see: 1-3], includes two layers of varying content and volume – explicit and implicit. In the first, in the spirit of the emphasis on sensitivity, melancholy, and national color characteristic of the early French Romantics, his ideas about the art of romanticism, poetic gift, and the specifics of the creative process are verbalized in a strict academic style. After a long era of French concentration on Antiquity, Ballanche urges them to turn to national traditions – first of all Christianity, the heroic Middle Ages, the era of chivalry, the traditions of Gallic and Frankish ancestors, as well as the times of the Crusades, the terrible invasions of Saracens and northern tribes, although he does not deny ancient authors manifestations of sensitivity (aesthetic treatises "On feeling, considered in its relation to literature and the fine arts" – 1801, "Experience on social institutions in their relation to new ideas" – 1818) ^[4-5].

The second, implicit layer, is associated with the artistic prose of Ballanche. It includes the philosophical and aesthetic poems "Antigone" (1814), "The Old Man and the Young Man" (1819), "The Man without a Name" (1820), "The Experience of social palingenesis. Orpheus" (1827-1829) ^[6-9][1] with a total volume of about one and a half thousand pages, testifying both to the literary gift of the author and the originality of his aesthetic position, a significant revision of the ideas of his own theoretical treatises. Unlike most French romantics, who distance themselves from ancient culture as pagan in favor of Christianity and medieval art, Ballanche romanticizes Antiquity in his talented paraphrases of mythological subjects, finding in it the beginnings of future Christian ideas of sublime love, mercy, sacrifice, beauty and goodness. This is a kind of attempt at a new renaissance of ancient art in a romantic way (the very term "palingenesia", used in the title of one of his epics, comes from the Greek "paliggenesia" – "renaissance" – and is interpreted by the author as a radical rebirth of the world for the sake of its coming revival; it is this stage of cultural and historical development that marks, according to in his opinion, romanticism). The texts of philosophical epics show both the influence of mystical doctrine and the author's growing commitment to the ideas of Christian utopian socialism [see: 10].

Ballanche's work, which has undergone significant evolution in its internally contradictory integrity, is a fascinating journey of the author's aesthetic thought through the spaces of European artistic culture, both of the distant past and of the romantic period in the development of art that is acutely relevant for the last third of the XVIII – first half of the XIX century. 

Philosophical and aesthetic views of P. S. Ballanche,

set forth in his treatises

Romantic distancing from classicism

In his theoretical treatises, Ballanche thinks of romanticism as a completely new artistic phenomenon in constant motion, characterized by growing independence from classical rules, the use of new phrases and innovations in literary style in favor of turns of lively oral speech [see: 11]. He notes that Romanism, like everything new in art, meets resistance from adherents of the established artistic and aesthetic system, but the considerable efforts of the latter themselves testify to its power. Romanticism expands the limits of imitation, moves away from the laws of analogy, moves thought to fight against the frozen, dogmatic aesthetic norms of classicism, refuses to imitate ancient masterpieces and borrow literary plots from them, drawing them from the events of modernity. Classical ideas that have long shone in the world of art are now outdated, their intolerance has deprived artists of free breath. In this context, Ballanche, like other early romantics, distances himself from the normativity of the aesthetics of classicism. Referring to the maxim of St. Augustine, which says that not following the rules gives rise to eloquence, but eloquence is following the rules, he asks a rhetorical question about what these rules are for. And concludes: "Truly, a genius was born before the rules. Even before grammarians and rhetoricians bored the world and made the muses yawn, poets sang of nature and heroes. [...] So, a genius creates in the power of inspiration, and then a philologist deduces rules from his works, which become law for a crowd of artisans who can work only with a square and compasses. But woe to the one who, filled with this wisdom, encroaches on a place in the temple of the Muses!" ^{[12, pp. 34, 35]}.

Developing these thoughts, the French romantic is convinced that classicist prejudices for too long prompted French poets to cling to pagan myths, and this prevented the creation of original works. In his opinion, for a long time submission to the classical yoke was carried out without coercion and, therefore, did not in the least restrict freedom; now the independent human spirit revolts against this voluntary submission, the fate of which is to degenerate into servile imitation. Ballanche concludes that the classical genius has exhausted itself, like all other traditions. He enriched the realm of imagination with all the ideas and feelings he was supposed to enrich. His mission is accomplished. "Boileau has lost his scepter forever. The poetic genius of Greece, to whose precepts Horace remained faithful in the bosom of the Latin language, and Boileau in the bosom of the French, has now exhausted itself" ^{[13, p. 88]}. Now, when the spirit of Antiquity loses its power over poetry and the corresponding allegories have dried up, one should not too slavishly imitate the ancients – modern authors should fill ancient plots with completely new thoughts and feelings: "It is useless to give a mature husband milk from a wet nurse" ^{[13, p. 89]}.

Romantic sensitivity

Ballanche predicts that classicism, as a "dynasty that has lost its crown" ^{[13, p. 76]}, will soon lose its legislative role and become nothing more than an archaeological antiquity. It will be replaced by a new, romantic artistic trend that corresponds to modern social ideas and institutions. He considers Jean-Jacques Rousseau to be his forerunner, and the work of Germaine de Stael to be a modern embodiment. Sharing her ideas expressed in the books "On Literature and its connection with social Institutions" and "On Germany", Ballanche believes that romantic literature originated in the depths of the still emerging German language^[2]. Like the German romantics, their French like-minded people should turn to the origins and traditions of national culture, the historical past, the customs and customs of the people, folklore, local flavor. All this should serve as a new tide of poetic inspiration, the renewal of art and aesthetics in a romantic way: "We crave a positive doctrine, irrefutable as mathematical proof" ^{[13, p. 77]}, despite the fact that everything is in the will of God – language, art, and society.

Ballanche's writings highlight one of the dominant aesthetic doctrines of Romanticism, which later became characteristic of the work of all French romantics – the emphasis on feeling and sensitivity. In this regard, he also agrees with J. de Stael, who wrote in her treatise "On the influence of passions on the happiness of people and nations": "... I admit that there is something great in passion that it elevates a person; he fulfills almost everything he conceives – so firm and consistent will is an effective force Morally speaking! A person who is carried away by something that is stronger than him lives on wear and tear, but he also gets more life. If we admit that the soul is just a motivating force, then this force is very great when it is guided by passion" ^{[14, p. 365]}. Ballanche believes that it is precisely sensitivity, which prefers the frozen ideal of elevation above human passions to the excitement of the human heart in the vicissitudes of private life, that more expresses the needs of all strata of society^[3].

Distancing himself from educational sensationalism and sentimentalism, Ballanche, in the spirit of Kant's definition of beauty, complemented by moral pathos, thinks of romantic sensitivity as a moral force that "instinctively, without the help of reason, makes judgments about everything that lives according to the laws of our animal, personal and spiritual nature. The first is related to physical sensitivity, or sensations, the second is related to individuality, or conscience, and the third is related to our thinking abilities, or our soul. The first sphere unites us with all visible nature, the second gives us the ability to self-knowledge and the ability to distinguish good from evil; the third introduces us to a higher order, and our earthly existence begins to seem to us only an echo of it; it opens up infinity to us. Of these three hypostases, a fourth is formed – our human essence" ^{[12, p. 37]}. In an effort to give certainty to such a vague concept as "feeling," according to him, the French romantic says that every thought born from a moral idea is a feeling; every strong passion begins and ends with a feeling (selfish and far-fetched passion is distinguished from natural by the fact that the latter is based on feeling, or moral the side of love).

Reasoning about feeling ethically serves Ballanche as the basis of his aesthetic concept of romantic sensitivity, on which he seeks to build a "universal poetics of literature and art", or "poetics of feeling" ^{[12, p. 38]}. Its core is the idea of imitation in art of beautiful nature, based on the fact that morality and art based on imitation have a common source – feeling. Developing Charles Batte's position that all fine arts are built on the general principle of imitation of beautiful nature, Ballanche concludes that it is from this kind of imitation that a beautiful aesthetic ideal is born, and the ability to capture in nature what is necessary for its creation is called genius or talent: "The ability of a genius to feel the beautiful in nature and then to imitate him, the ability that precedes contemplation and turns into the habit of experiencing excitement at the sight of beauty; this ability is the power of feeling, which we discussed above. Having reached a certain power and frenzy, feeling turns into enthusiasm" ^{[12, p. 39]}; "so, feeling is nothing but genius in its natural guise; it is both a judge and a model of eternal, universal beauty" ^{[12, p. 38]}. The feeling interpreted in this way prompts Ballanche to talk about the emergence of a new, inherent romantic worldview, the ability to judge how close an artist has come to ideal perfection in imitation of nature, so that imitation of nature in art often excites no less than nature itself. This ability seems to him to be a kind of aesthetic feeling.

Based on his understanding of feeling as such and aesthetic feeling, in particular, the French thinker offers his own interpretation of Aristotelian catharsis. Aristotle's position on purification through compassion and fear of such affects, which caused so many interpretations in the history of aesthetics, he thinks of as the result of a manifestation of sensitivity that is not subjected to torture when comparing fictional misfortunes with real ones, on the one hand, and the virtues of imitation, on the other, which gives the perceiver an inexplicable and difficult to analyze pleasure. Ballanche also comments on a passage from "Poetics" freely retold by him, saying that the artist sometimes depicts ugly objects, but if they are painted masterfully, then we admire the perfection of imitation, forgetting about the ugliness of the object. It is precisely to this kind of admiration, which testifies to the love of art, that Ballanche refers the feeling that arises from John Milton's bold depiction of Satan: the most sublime admiration in Paradise Lost is not caused by Satan himself, but by Milton's amazing genius.

Unlike his contemporary, one of the founders of the romanesque aesthetics, Rene de Chateaubriand, who distanced himself in the "Genius of Christianity" from pagan Antiquity, Ballanche highly appreciates the manifestations of sensitivity in ancient Greek art. In his opinion, the barbarity of the savage is combined in him with the generosity of the hero, which is manifested not only in a sympathetic description of manners and characters, but also in stories about battles: "Sensitivity is the whole secret of Homer; without it, Achilles would be disgusting. Having never painted absolutely virtuous heroes, the ancients never painted people who were absolutely vicious" ^{[12, p. 56]}. Referring to the sensitivity of ancient authors, manifested in the rural paintings they created, Ballanche expresses the opinion that the mythological system, fascinating in its expressiveness, as a whole was based on the idea of universal sensitivity. He concludes that the basis of the character of the ancients was feeling, whereas now the mind dominates, and concludes that simplicity and sincerity serve people much better than all the sophistication of the modern European mind.

Romantic melancholy and vagueness of passions.

The sensitivity of a finely organized modern artist inevitably generates vagueness of passions and melancholy – this idea, which, along with Ballanche, is put forward by R. de Chateaubrain, J. de Stael in France, A.V. Schlegel in Germany, will also become the backbone for the aesthetics and art of romanticism. Distancing themselves from the qualifications of melancholy as a mental illness that prevailed in the XVIII century, early romantics saw in it a sign of refinement of nature, the poetic temperament of the artist, seeking a lofty ideal, absolute perfection. Ballanche thinks of melancholy as a quiet deep suffering, always carrying something sweet in itself; its essence consists of deep and at the same time vague impressions: "Life is swift like a stream; [...] the vagueness of our sensations, the mystery of our pleasures, our restless imagination and especially the inexplicable, so familiar and at the same time such a mysterious taste of bitterness ... which obscures the source of all our pleasures, an obscure feeling of our weakness and insignificance that haunts us relentlessly – all this makes up that feeling of sweet sadness that we call melancholy" ^{[12, p. 45]}. If ancient authors, painting melancholic paintings full of charm, drew inspiration from nature, then modern artists tend to look for it in art. However, knowing the power of the impact of paintings imbued with melancholy, they create works that sometimes resemble artificial ruins in French gardens, which do not touch the heart, do not cause trepidation, do not evoke romantic dreams. The inexplicable feeling of charm by melancholy is hostile to the tricks of art, the French romantic believes, it can only be inspired by nature, which excites the sensitive strings of the soul.

In search of the origins of romantic moods tinged with melancholy, Ballanche, like J. de Stael refers to the customs and traditions of the northern peoples, saying that the harsh, inhospitable nature has settled in them a constant tendency to melancholy. Thus, Scottish mythology, in which everything in nature comes to life and talks about the past, is full of great sensitivity: "This spirit permeates all their poetry: breathing either the militant courage and love for the fatherland that distinguished the most glorious peoples of antiquity, or the serenity of idyll, it is invariably colored by that melancholy that is so close to sensitive souls and so beautiful it is combined with the majestic and regal severity of nature" ^{[12, p. 60]}. He sees Ossian's merit in the fact that this most famous of the bards left songs full of great, beautiful images and strong feelings, captured nature in all its greatness. However, unlike de Stael, Ballanche believes that French literature, which she considers southern [See: 15, pp. 375-377], is able to combine the poetry of the North and South of Europe, the achievements of Celtic bards and French troubadours, the charm of melancholy with the charms of imagination. He considers bards, skalds, trouvers, troubadours to be members of the same poetic family. Their work is especially close to him in that it tends to live oral speech, the source of eternal truths given to man by God, in contrast to the written word as a human invention and social phenomenon.

In the works of English and German poets, who excelled at pastoral descriptions of nature, Ballanche also highlights touching scenes full of melancholy: "The immortal Delille was the first to transplant this beautiful foreign flower onto our soil, which has since become an ornament to every flower bed, every bouquet" ^{[12, p. 66]}; the beautiful pastorals of Gellert, Wieland, Kleist, Gessner, Thomson, Saint Lambert evoke poetic dreams. In addition, English and German authors have created a number of highly artistic original novels. The French romantic highly appreciates Stern's novel "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy" for its combination of sensitivity and sublimity, in which melancholy causing sweet pain seeps through the fun, from which tears come to his eyes. Ballanche speaks with praise of Richardson's novels, highly appreciates Goethe's "The Sufferings of Young Werther", comparing them with Rousseau's "Julia, or the New Heloise" and Bernardin de Saint Pierre's "Paul and Virginia". The analysis of these works confirms the idea of the French romantic that the source of the melancholic vagueness of passions is often the feeling of love. If the ancients, according to Ballanche, love was always either just a sensual attraction or madness, and eroticism and epicureanism acted as an antidote to melancholy, then he considers the appearance of the novel genre inspired by love and melancholy with a touch of subtle feminine sensitivity to be the first example of Modern literature.

The breeding ground of melancholy is loneliness. Loneliness is another frequent attribute of a romantic lifestyle, so profoundly meaningful and expressively described later by mature romantics – Alfred de Vigny and Alfred de Musset. Ballanche says that melancholy seeks solitude, whether it is a desert where it seems that no human foot has ever set foot; the stillness of the night; the canopy of a weeping willow or a gloomy cypress; a breeze, a harbinger of a storm, shaking the pyramidal crowns of pines; the sound of a waterfall falling from a wild cliff. He sees solitude as a breeding ground for inspiration and creative ideas: "Solitude is dear, first of all, to talented people, whose soul is sweetly agitated by the blissful breath of melancholy, just as ripe ears of corn gently sway from the breeze; in solitude, the plans of a talented person are formed, feelings manifest, original ideas are easily and naturally born; in solitude in solitude, he can comprehend the secrets of his own heart, and finally, in solitude, the most beautiful gusts of inspiration embrace him" ^{[12, p. 49]}. The extreme case of loneliness is blindness: the inability to see the outside world sharpens the sensitivity of the inner eye to the light of reason – the true light. All this favors genius, "because constant melancholy gives him strength and depth" ^{[12, p. 49]}.

The essence of poetry

Ballanche puts poetic genius at the forefront of his aesthetics. He considers the word "poet" to be more general and, most importantly, more correct than the word "artist". Is an artist worth much if he is not a poet? – the French thinker asks a rhetorical question. He considers poetic abilities to be innate, mystically conditioned by the location of the constellations at the moment of the future poet's birth; subsequently, his work is fertilized by religion.

Ballanche interprets poetry broadly, referring to it not only carefully polished poems decorated with rhyme, but also prose (the boundaries between poetry and prose are artificial, "because these boundaries contradict the very nature of things" ^{[13, p. 73]}), fine arts in general, as well as historical chronicles. Poetry, in his view, consists in telling about events or teachings that are poetic in nature – after all, even the most talented person cannot make a poetic thing that is not such, a thing that does not belong to the realm of poetry. And he concludes that poetry is universal, not local, poetry is everywhere, the main thing is to catch it: it is the living word of the human race. Therefore, "poetry is a language, and by no means a form of language" ^{[13, p. 84]}.

The times of the domination of the word, he emphasizes, were times of imagination, from now on, the times of the domination of independent poetic thought should become times of sensitive, lively, domineering reason. In this regard, Ballanche refers to the very structure and spirit of the French language [See details: 16], full of irrefutable common sense, invincible logic, all-pervading clarity, a sense of proportion and taste: "serving, perhaps, as an obstacle to unbridled passion, he keeps enthusiasm within limits, crossing which he would turn into turbidity which should be highly favorable for a calm, serious, lively discussion" ^{[13, p. 82]}. The glorification of the Lord's power should be combined in poetry with a commitment to human attachments and moral freedom: "Man will forever remain an inexhaustible storehouse: one can know nature more deeply, but human feelings will always be huge and boundless" ^{[13, p. 90]}. He notes that ancient historians wrote the history of peoples, historians of modern times – the history of sovereigns, the powerful of this world, but the first real historians were poets, because they wrote the history of man, the history of the human race and therefore they knew the highest and all-encompassing truth. From now on, the protagonists of poetry should be not only kings and heroes, but also ordinary people, over whose sufferings readers will shed tears – because the Bible and the Gospel teach us to have compassion for all people. In this regard, Ballanche refers as an example to German poetic works that tell about private destinies – Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea, Baggesen's Partheneid. At the same time, he insists that the new romantic art is designed to revise traditional ideas about the aesthetic ideal, to abandon idealizing teachings about beauty in favor of the truth of life: "Flawlessly regular features, a face without the slightest flaw, represent a beautiful ideal, but change the smallest thing in these heavenly, angelic features: draw on satin skin barely a noticeable wrinkle, or, as Gessner says, a slight scratch, and the face, without losing its charm, will acquire vitality and humanity; it will cause less admiration, but more love" ^{[12, p. 69]}.

Saying that at every step we are faced with a social feeling and the need for it, Ballanche hopes that "equality will prevail, in turn, in the domain of poetry and art" ^{[13, p. 90]} – after all, the essence of poetry is that it is intelligible to everyone. He calls for the renewal of French literature in accordance with such new intentions, the creation of a new romantic literature that would become a classic for the emerging world order.

Innovations in literature should also be promoted by a new literary criticism based on feeling, striving to penetrate into the innermost meaning of the beautiful and noble creations of the human mind, to delve into the essence of things, refusing to reduce its tasks to discussing mainly the form and composition of works, their compliance with certain rules, pedantic comparison with samples. He rejects such criticism, which is essentially based on the principles of classical aesthetics, as purely formal, emphasizing that "words should no longer bother us, we need to comprehend the very thought. This new criticism will not only tear off the veils of unknown miracles, but will also show us which ways to choose in order to create such miracles ourselves" ^{[13, p. 82]}.

The French romantic believes that literary works should change direction, find new foundations. He hopes that a new literary dynasty will soon ascend to the empty throne of imagination, and "the phoenix, burned in a mysterious flame, will be reborn from its incorruptible ashes," for "the strong and powerful roots of the oak go deep into the ground, and its peak reaches heights where thunderstorms are born; no one around knows how this oak tree has grown..." ^{[13, pp. 93, 85]}, and therefore art will remain a worthy decoration of society.

The implicit aesthetics of P. S. Ballanche, expressed in his works of art

Ballanche's literary work testifies to fundamental changes in his views on art and aesthetics compared to the theoretical treatises of the previous period. The originality of Ballanche's updated position lies in the fact that he interprets art in a mystical spirit as a medium, a transmitter of prophecies, the language of higher powers. This is especially noticeable in his own literary work – the philosophical epics "Antigone", "The Elder and the Young Man", "The Man without a Name", "The Experience of social palingenesis. Orpheus"^[4], in which the essence of his mature philosophical and aesthetic views - the doctrine of redemption – is expressed by means of romantic symbolization. His interest in mythological subjects and their original interpretation sharply distinguish him from the general background of the negative attitude of most French romantic artists, committed to the ideas of Christianity and medieval culture, to pagan Antiquity.

"Antigone"

"Antigone" ^[17] Ballanche (1814) is a hymn to beauty and romantic love. Taking into account the experience of the classics of Greek Antiquity – Aeschylus ("Seven against Thebes"), Sophocles ("Antigone", "Oedipus the King" and "Oedipus in Colon"), Euripides ("The Petitioners"), but without repeating it, the author combines in six books his epic heroes and motifs of the Theban and Trojan cycles, giving them a mystical and romantic coloring. The dominants of Ballanche's aesthetic thought – sensitivity, melancholy – find artistic expression here, marked by romantic symbolism, heightened lyricism, meditations on themes of mystical prophecies, gloomy forebodings, and the fatal predestination of human destiny.

Using the technique of a story within a story, Ballanche builds the plot on the narration of a witness to the fatal events in Thebes that killed King Oedipus and his family, the blind soothsayer Tiresias, who arrived in Troy with his daughter Daphne at the court of King Priam shortly before the outbreak of the Trojan War, and intersperses his own comments. Such a tie allows you to combine in one artistic space-time the heroes of Thebes and the protagonists of the Trojan vicissitudes – Hecuba, the Beautiful Helen, regretting adultery and reviving only when thinking about her new husband, Paris, and a number of other mythological characters, including the gods of Olympus, the muses of Parnassus, the goddess of vengeance Nemesis, Medusa Gorgon, Bacchus, nymphs, furies, and erinnias. In the center of Tiresias' story, accompanied by singing and playing the lyre of his daughter (her vocalizations are likened to the song of a dying swan), the priestess of Apollo, a kind of hypostasis of the Sphinx, asking terrible riddles in a mysterious language, is Antigone, an ideal example of filial devotion, love and self–sacrifice, "the heroine of honor and misfortune" ^{[17, p. 7]}, a symbol of fortitude, superhuman fortitude and at the same time girlish modesty and tenderness. The indelible impression on others is made by the voice of Daphne, who sings in religious hymns of the immortal gods and the arts sent by them to comfort people. The whole family of Priam listens to the words of the elder with respectful admiration – after all, "wisdom and poetry were considered the most beautiful gifts of the gods at that time" ^{[17, p. 15]}, Ballanche notes.

Love also belongs to these gifts. In contrast to the ancient interpretations, the epic significantly strengthens the love line, filled with romantic content here. Common misfortunes, more than joys and happiness, strengthened the barely conceived feelings in the noble hearts of Antigone and Hemon, the son of Creon. The first sign of their love was tears caused by the community of dramatic experiences. Their touching chaste relationship is imbued with spiritual generosity, compassion, selflessness, mutual respect and purity. Since his youth, Gemon dreamed of love as a sublime feeling for a perfect girlfriend, a beautiful soul and body, whom he would love more than himself, and they would be worthy of each other.  He would like to become a reliable shield for Antigone, whom he dreams of seeing as his wife, capable of protecting her from any adversity. However, the girl who loves him says that she cannot marry him – this is prevented by her duty, the essence of which she herself does not yet know^[5]. At the same time, deep down, she does not give up hope for the possibility of their happy union: "These are the sailors caught in a terrible storm. Terror and death threaten a defenseless vessel; but on the threshold of death in the depths of the waters, they still raise their eyes to Orion, who highlights the deep darkness with his weak light" ^{[17, pp. 45-46]}. In all the trials that fall to their lot, the love of the heroes retains a "sublime superhuman character" ^{[17, p. 172]}. Closer to the tragic denouement, Antigone says that the supreme feat of a lover is to renounce love: "It was given to me by misfortune, but death will undoubtedly unite us" ^{[17, p. 205][6]}.

Throughout the epic, Antigone is faithful to her filial and sisterly duty. However, unlike the heroines of classical tragedies, there is no conflict between love and duty, a dramatic problem of choice, as in Racine's tragedies "Thebaid, or the Enemy Brothers" (1664) or Vittorio Alfieri's "Atigona" (1776). The behavior of the heroine of the Ballanche epic is completely organic, she is not tormented by inner demons, she goes straight to her goal – whether it is the selfless support of a blind father in his wanderings or the funeral of Polynices against the will of Creon. She is not a rebel, as Antigone will appear in Jean Anouy's play of the same name, written in the spirit of the ideas of the French Resistance (1942), and in Bertold Brecht's antifascist Antigone (1948). Submissive to the will of the gods, the heroine of Ballanche fulfills her duty with stoic humility, meekly accepting her lot, confident that her misfortunes are of an inescapable existential nature. The author enhances the romantic sound of an almost Shakespearean finale in its intensity, when a girl immured in a cave, who did not touch the food and water left for her, in fact voluntarily quietly passes away at the moment when a mortally wounded Gemon pushes aside a huge stone that blocked the entrance with the last of her strength – in the moment before death, lovers see each other, and Antigone smiles tenderly; this last glimpse of life is full of humility and happiness. Like a Phoenix rushing into a fire lit by himself, she was able to smile at death, as she had previously smiled at her enemies; the torments of the daughter of Oedipus were over, she had fulfilled her duty to her unhappy family and now she must die – because her life would henceforth become banal and purposeless, Tiresias says. "She faded away like a beautiful rosehip bush with a stem broken by a thunderstorm. A fragrant tree, torn from the land that nourished it and thrown on a barren stone, will retain its wonderful flowers for a short time; but soon they will wither and their fragrance will disappear into the air" ^{[17, pp. 292-293]}.

Antigone's death appears in the epic as her last redemptive sacrifice, designed to appease the wrath of the gods, put an end to crimes and disasters. It seems that Ballanche thus projects into Antiquity the Christian motives of the atoning sacrifice for the sins of mankind.

As for the fate of Oedipus, it is likened in the epic to a terrible dream in which a dagger is about to plunge into your head, and an abyss opens under your feet. He appears as Sisyphus turned into a rock, inspiring horror and compassion – integral components of catharsis. For Ballanche, he is a noble, beautiful, majestic hero in his suffering. But he can also be formidable. In an episode full of romantic symbolization, turning to the gods who took revenge on him for the murder of his father, Oedipus asks them to punish his sons for the suffering they brought. Cursing Etiokles and Polynices, he says: "Yes, I throw them my crown, as a drunkard in the midst of an orgy throws half-gnawed bones to the ground in order to experience the strange pleasure of watching hungry dogs fight for this vile prey" ^{[17, p. 60]}. The battle of the two brothers in the epic is shrouded in a mystical flair: the Thebans saw the shadow of Oedipus wandering in the dark, she simultaneously prayed and threatened, called for mercy and revenge.

The Theban king is likened to an old prophetic oak from the forest of Dido: "His wrinkled forehead has turned black with time, his powerful trunk has withstood seasonal weather changes; but he will collapse at the first thunderstorm, able to predict only his own end. Such was Oedipus" ^{[17, pp. 72-73]}. His death is also shrouded in mystery: after praising Antigone for her devotion and self-sacrifice, Oedipus says goodbye to her and dies. "There's nothing left of him. So the son of Lai disappeared from the face of the earth. Was he burned by lightning or swallowed up by the abyss? Or was he taken alive to Olympus? The gods keep this secret" ^{[17, p. 89]}.  

The existential problem, so close to the French romantics, appears in the epic as the immutable will of strict but just gods, who determine the sad fate of vulnerable mortals. Existence is bought by them at a high price. The gifts of fate are dangerous: the promised glory and prosperity turn into misfortunes; life is ephemeral, fleeting, full of bitterness, the only thing that is real in it is tears; the time between birth and death is lived as one day: "in their assumptions, people are like a light web woven by a hardworking spider in our homes – but it will be instantly swept away by vigilant a slave" ^{[17, p. 65]}. Oedipus, in Ballanche's view, foresees his future worldwide fame as a symbol of the sad lot of man. The king asks Tiresias to save him from the future, fearing not an open battle with enemies, but terrible secrets, dark prophecies. The wise soothsayer sees a heartbreaking picture: "In the face of the diverse manifestations of suffering and despair of this family, it seemed that it was being squeezed in its disgusting rings by a huge serpent, condemning its members to various trials" ^{[17, p. 47]}.

In the words of Gemon, Ballanche carries out the idea close to Christianity that the earthly lot of man is tears and pain, but his true future is eternal life, where innocent souls will know happiness. It is no coincidence that Antigone puts a lotus flower on the forehead of the deceased Polynices, a symbol of future life.

In the philosophical and aesthetic epic of the French romantic, a solemn hymn to beauty sounds: "How to describe in human language the charm and power of beauty? How can I tell you about her weakness and strength, uncertainty and positivity? How to explain its victorious appeal, conquering the senses, captivating the heart, awakening the imagination, suppressing the arbitrariness of the mind?.. Timid, delicate and gentle, it would seem that she should obey the laws: but it is she who sets them, dominating necessity; she often determines the fate of people and even empires: every force bows to her, becoming a weakness. But if all the beautiful things that delight mortals who are proud of them last only a moment, then how fleeting it is for the most wonderful of them! Her presence brings us wonderful dreams, but as soon as we turn away from them, beauty disappears like a shadow, like a vague memory of a wonderful dream. What remains, alas, is like a faint echo of the magical golden lyre. Contemplating the beauty of this fragile masterpiece of the immortal gods, which they illuminated with a ray of their glory, causes both bitter and sweet, pleasant and sad feelings. How to express in human language the attractiveness and power of beauty?" ^{[17, pp. 258-259]}.

"The experience of social palingenesis. Orpheus"

Ballanche emphasizes the idea that art, especially poetry and music, softened the hearts of people in ancient times. In his large-scale philosophical epic "The experience of social palingenesis. Orpheus", consisting of an introduction, nine books and an epilogue, the French romantic sets out to reveal the role of art in civilizational development, marked by the emergence of language, the human name, the institution of marriage, ancestral memory, property. At all stages of this process, determined by the divine will, its medium is the "civilizing lyre" of Orpheus, promising redemption as the main goal of human life, its justification.

  If in Antigone Ballanche romanticizes Greek mythology, then in The Experience of Social Palingenesis. Orpheus" he offers a romantic author's version of Latin mythology. Considering mythology to be a symbolic condensation of history, he believes that the Latin myth is the symbol of European historical development due to the fact that it has retained its cosmogonic meaning to a greater extent than the Greek, and the character of the transition from Eastern to Western civilization is more clearly visible in it. In the myth of Orpheus, Ballanche sees a cluster of fifteen centuries of human history – from ancient Egypt to the Christian era. His special attention is drawn to the changing times of social decline and rebirth, trials and purification, and redemption [See: 18-19]. At the same time, he clarifies that, following the Platonic tradition, he considers the idea to precede the fact, and therefore his reference point is an ideal, not a real chronology.

Ballanche does not hide the fact that he reinvented the myth of Orpheus, in which the latter appears, on the one hand, a plebeian personifying man as such, on the other – the hero of the cosmogonic myth, appearing simultaneously initiated and initiator, comprehending the present, foreseeing the future and aspiring to the future, that is, a progressive person personifying social rebirth.

Just like in Antigone, "The experience of social palingenesis. Orpheus" is built like a story within a story. Tamiris (his name means "harmonic voice"), a Thracian poet, a virtuoso of playing the kithara, who introduces himself as a friend and colleague of Orpheus in the Argonauts' campaign for the Golden Fleece, tells about the life and deeds of Orpheus to his interlocutor Evander (literally translated – "a good man"). Evander was forced to leave his native Greece with his mother and settle in Italy, where he formed the Pallantium settlement on the banks of the Tiber, on the site of modern Rome, from which he got his name Palatine Hill. According to legend, he enlightened the indigenous inhabitants of Latium, taught them the achievements of ancient Greek civilization, participated in the creation of the Latin alphabet, for which he was revered in Ancient Rome as one of the patron gods of the local population.

The conversation of two gray-haired sages takes place on the "quadrangular hill" of Pallantium. Tamiris's narrative is a kind of metaphysical search for the "true" Orpheus, which differs in some ways from the canonical mythological version. He is interested not so much in Orpheus's journey to hell for Eurydice with its tragic ending, as in his sudden appearance from the sea latitudes in front of Eurydice's parents, the romantic birth of young chaste love, parental blessing for marriage, provided that the lovers will live as brother and sister until they acquire property as a symbol of familiarization with civilization, the vicissitudes of their wanderings, the longing of Eurydice, who longs for a genuine marriage, and the death of a nymph not created for carnal love on the eve of the desired event. The sensual love of the beautiful maenad, the Bacchanalian dancer Erigona, who lusts after Orpheus, is not ignored either – he offers her a purely spiritual communication. Unlike one of the established versions of the myth, the maenads do not tear Orpheus apart – his trace is lost. The search for a clue to the fate of Orpheus leads Tamiris to the places of his travels, including Egypt, where he became known as the first of the Hellenes in the mysteries, poetry and music. Tamiris strives to comprehend the wisdom of the Egyptian priests, including through often cruel trials on the path of initiation. Eventually, he finds himself back in Greece, where he meets a blind hermit elder, long gone from the world, and conducts metaphysical conversations with him about life, death and art. After the death of the nameless elder, the muses erect a tombstone for him, where his name is Orpheus; they buried his golden lyre with him. Unknowingly, Tamiris has finally found his friend.

Tamiris' story prompts Evander to admit that, compared with Greece, "the myth in Latium has preserved its purity to a greater extent, preserved in the sanctuaries of Etruria almost in its original form" ^{[20, p. 230]}. Evander cannot but agree that the world he is used to is changing, shedding his skin, like an old snake, in order to rejuvenate. Tamiris promises the Romans a dominant role in the dynamic development of the West due to the fruitful gains of the human spirit associated with Christianity. He predicts to his interlocutor the end of his power, the power of the patricians, nurtured by the immobile East, who will be replaced by plebeians like Orpheus – they will be the future of the progressive West. The statues of the civilizing poet Orpheus and Prometheus, who gave people fire and taught them crafts, installed on the hills of ancient Rome, symbolize the creative, searching, freedom-loving spirit of Western civilization, testifying that, ideally, myth and history should correspond to each other.

Ballanche's epic, written in the spirit of romantic symbolization, is imbued with the author's philosophical reflections on the fate of mankind and the role that art plays in them. The artistic symbol has a key role here. In his book, written in a mystical and esoteric way, the French romantic proceeds from the fact that "by the will of the gods, everything in human life is symbolic" ^{[20, p. 173]}.

Ballanche thinks of Antiquity as a time of crisis, an era of completion and renewal, including social and artistic. Poets, thanks to their divine inspiration and enthusiasm, he considers equal in the power of influencing others to the powerful of this world, which determines the irreplaceable role of art on the path of social revival: "Poets are teachers of peoples, only they are versed in the deepest secrets of marali and politics" ^{[20, p. 22]}. It was Orpheus, the greatest genius endowed by the gods with knowledge of the laws of social life, goodness and beauty, who transmitted them to people through his art.

In poetry, Ballanche sees a symbol of truth conquering time. He considers beauty as the true embodiment of poetry to be the source of moral strength, thanks to which it dominates the hearts [See: 21]. Having the gift of prophecy, poetry and music in a romantic spirit are appreciated by him primarily for the flight of imagination, sensitivity, sympathy and sympathy for their own kind, cordiality. In the mouth of Eurydice, he puts the words that "everything happens in the depths of our heart, and only it gives everything existence and reality" ^{[20, p. 64]}. After all, poetry is a warming hearth, a torch bearing light, an eternal unquenchable light, a source of eternally living, inexhaustible, active inspiration, passed down from generation to generation. Poetry is inspired by God, artistic choice is superpersonal in nature: "It is not in my power to choose chants, my lyre is like a supernatural force that emits inspired sounds inspired by it," says Orpheus ^{[20, p. 181]}. Commenting on these words, Ballanche proceeds from the fact that the word of God transmitted to man undergoes changes in order to be understood, felt by him, and imprinted in consciousness. However, human organs of perception are imperfect, and therefore the meaning of this message is obscured, which determines the symbolic character of poetry as such. The symbol contains the truth, which is transmitted not by word of mouth, but in a purely spiritual way.

More than half a century before the emergence of French symbolism, Ballanche, anticipating one of its main postulates, which received full formalization in the aesthetics of Charles Baudelaire, puts forward the idea of correspondences of the lower and higher worlds: "At various levels of civilization development in diverse fields of human activity, mysterious analogies with celestial spheres are found: the ideal and plastic universe correspond to each other"^{[20, p. 289]}. Poetry for Ballanche is the quintessence of the symbolic, the source of beauty and profound wisdom. In the spirit of Aristotle's ideas that poetry is more serious and philosophical than history, Ballanche believes that historians only follow the poets, reproducing the chronology of events, while poets comprehend their holistic, generalized meaning, seeing and clarifying the underlying causes of what is happening in their work; they are able to foresee the future. Through the mouth of Tamiris, the author argues that the sublime mission of the genius poet is to be ahead of other people, to pave the way for the progressive development of mankind.

In his epic, Ballanche anticipates the famous existentialist aphorism of J. P. Sartre "hell is others", formulating this idea much more broadly: "hell is the world" ^{[20, p. 292]}. However, no matter what, a person must fight and win for the sake of the life of the next century. The French romantic comes to the philosophical conclusion that life with its joys and sorrows is a dedication, a test, and death is redemption, initiating a new life of the soul. Pride and vanity are fraught with pangs of conscience, leading to repentance as a path to redemption. The ancient principle of "know yourself" teaches that you need to come to the truth on your own, the path to it requires responsibility and self-improvement, contributing to the improvement of society as a whole on the paths of collectivism, mutual sympathy and solidarity. Free development is the principle that guided Orpheus, rejecting swaddled statues symbolizing the East, for statues with free arms and legs as symbols of dynamic development of the Western type, the law of restoration and correction – palingenesis. The symbol of the latter is the phoenix bird: societies die and rise in its likeness.

In the spirit of Orphism, Ballanche hopes that "one day the entire human race will be able to become one big family" ^{[20, p. 80]}, living according to the laws of love, rejecting any hierarchical divisions, up to class differences [See: 22-23]. Elements of utopian Christian socialism are palpable in his social views. In the epilogue of his philosophical epic, he glorifies the civilizing role of the Christian cross, symbolizing "the privileged city of redemption, an inviolable refuge, a new mystical eternal city, about the prophetic miracles of which I hope to tell one day" ^{[20, p. 406]}.

"The Man without a name"

The hero of Ballanche's philosophical epic "The Man without a Name" (1820) appears as a romantic symbol of redemption ^[24]. Its protagonist is a sad, withdrawn, taciturn man who took the nickname Regicide – that's what the inhabitants of an abandoned poor village in the French Alps call him, where he settled after the execution of Louis XVI. The narrator who accidentally met him, who found himself in these places on the way to Italy – his carriage broke down – draws attention to the noble appearance of this tall, gray-haired man, who nevertheless causes him an instinctive rejection caused by a vague feeling of a crime committed by a stranger, the ghost of death. "The journey is like a succession of dreams; but isn't human life itself nothing more than a rather heavy dream?" ^{[24, p. 8]} – he gloomily remarks. The life of the Kingslayer turns out to be a kind of terrible dream. During the French bourgeois Revolution, as a member of the Convention, contrary to his own inner feeling, guided by an accidental impulse, and not by the will of the people, he voted for the death sentence of Louis XVI and since then he has not been able to forgive himself for this unmotivated act, considering it a crime, an indelible stigma. The execution of the monarch acquires in his eyes the scope of an ancient tragedy, terrible and sublime at the same time. Believing that he has incurred the wrath of God, he feels like a leper, unworthy to bear the name given to him by noble parents, and at the same time wonders, inspired by the tragedy of King Oedipus, whether some crime lurks in his father's past, which put a fatal seal on the fate of his son. After two years of wandering, with no luggage except the Bible, the self-imposed exile condemned himself to a lonely life of poverty in a miserable hovel. His entire existence has been going on since then under the sign of remorse, like the bites of a scorpion stinging itself. He punishes himself for sanctioning the murder not of the monarch, but of the monarchy: "Alas! Only this has been occupying me for a long time, depriving me of the past and the future" ^{[24, p. 61]}.

Reflecting on the existential experience of his interlocutor, the narrator concludes that a life full of suffering and remorse will serve to atone for his sins. The redemption of the regicide and delusions of the French people is represented in his view by the death of the king, who forgave his tormentors before the execution and offered prayers to the supreme arbiter of universal destinies. At the same time, the execution of Louis XVI appears in the epic as the fulfillment of God's will, and the king himself, who suffered for France, is compared to Christ, who suffered for humanity. 

Returning to the same places after a four-year stay in Italy, the narrator learns that the priests who visited the village managed to comfort the Regicide, humble his pride, and restore the unfortunate taste for life. But the Lord did not allow him to accept his innocence and took him to himself as soon as the atonement was completed. The narrator finds in the narrated story confirmation that "the abyss of unhappiness is preferable to the expectation of unhappiness. Is it really possible to find a semblance of peace at the bottom of the abyss?" ^{[24, pp. 47-48]} – he asks.

In this philosophical epic of Ballanche, along with a detailed description of the revolutionary events in France of the XVIII century and their consequences for the state and society, there are many meaningful reflections that even in random events there is a premonition of the future – after all, the gloomy destiny of man initially lies even in what, it would seem, promises happiness and well-being; criminal the energy is inexhaustible, which cannot be said about righteous intentions.

In the following two main parts of the epic, "Notes of the Regicide" and "Elegy", the content and tone of the author's narrative change. The "Notes ..." mainly discusses social issues. Louis XVI appears here as a sacred victim of social transformations, when Christianity is interpreted as a path to universal equality and justice. Ballanche's ideas of humanity, humanism, and respect for public opinion come to the fore. There are demands for the abolition of the death penalty. We are also talking about the role of writers in society, who are called either to keep pace with it or to outpace its development in their works – after all, "history most often consists of initial elements similar to the initial elements of poetry" ^{[24, p. 123]}. At the same time, the author bitterly notes that the high prestige of art in France did not prevent the death of the king.

As for the "Elegy", Ballanche thinks of it as "ideal poetry", compares it to the role of a choir in a Greek tragedy mourning the death of a righteous man. The final part of the book is dominated by the laudatory tone of the hymn in honor of the sublime death of Louis XVI. The emphasis is on the fact that history tells, teaches courage and humility, and poetry glorifies them. And in conclusion, the existential problem reasserts itself. Misfortunes await us when we have fun, the author warns his contemporaries. His words about the fascination with travesty, sex change, neglect of age, grotesque freedom of morals, which mark the death of one civilization and portend a new order of things, sound very relevant. However, Ballanche urges not to forget that a person only turns over an hourglass to measure time; "but he did not invent time" ^{[24, p. 164]}.

If in the "Experience of social palingenesis. Orpheus" clearly shows the features of Ballanche's social utopianism, then in "The Man without a Name" he acts as an opponent of revolutionary cataclysms, while not alien to the social problems of his time. It follows from his philosophical epics that for a true poet, one or another plot is no more important than a canvas for a painter. Ballanche believes that poetry should have a new point of reference – sublime metaphysics combined with poetry of reason and feeling.

Conclusion

Pierre Simon Ballanche called himself a two-faced Janus, looking in different directions at the same time. This self–assessment partly corresponds to two contradictory hypostases of his work - purely theoretical studies devoted to the aesthetics of Romanticism, and symbolic-epic philosophical poems in prose, imbued with reverence for Antiquity, mysticism in the spirit of J. Boehme and E. Swedenborg [See: 25], ideas of progress perceived by N. de Condorcet, tendencies of Christian utopian socialism, developed subsequently by F. R. de Lamennais, B. P. Enfantin, A. Saint-Simon. He is close to the ideas of mystics about prophets who have the gift of spiritual vision, the ability of moral transformation, which opens the path of spiritual and moral rebirth for a person even in earthly life, as well as faith in the role of Providence in the social sphere, sending trials for the sake of improving man and society. Such versatility of Ballanche's creative interests as a thinker and artist gave impetus to the development of not only early French Romanticism, but also its subsequent stages, and in the longer term influenced the aesthetics and art of symbolism and existentialism.

The doctrine of redemption, which formed the basis of his philosophical views, is combined with the idea of social progress through palingenesis, in which humanity, like the phoenix bird, is reborn from the ashes of dead, obsolete civilizations to a new, higher stage of civilizational development. And art in this cosmogonic-historical process plays, according to Ballanche, a leading civilizational role, which determines the priority importance of aesthetics in his creative quest.

The work of Pierre Simon Ballanche is not well known in the Russian scientific and literary environment, only a few, mostly short encyclopedic or review articles are devoted to some of its aspects [See: 26-28]. This work is intended to partially fill this gap.

Notes

1. These works by J. P. Ballanche have not been translated in Russia before.

2. "The Germans, who combine at the same time everything that happens very rarely: imagination and concentration, are more capable of lyrical poetry than many other peoples" ^{[29, p. 384]}. Like Benjamin Constant, de Stael finds the source of romantic sentiments precisely in German art, contrasting its enthusiasm with the rationalistic spirit of the followers of the principles of French classicism [see: 30-31].

3. In this context, Ballanche brings together the romantic genius and the genius of painting, which replaced the solemnly sublime genius of sculpture.

4. Alternative translation: "The experience of social revival." – N.M.

5. In the fourth book of the epic, Gemon admits that if Antigone had agreed to become his wife, he would not have endured such an excess of happiness – after all, man was created for suffering, not for happiness. He is echoed by Daphne, who says that the height of human desires is to change one feeling of sadness for another [See: 6, pp. 175, 178].

6. Preparing for the burial of Antigone in the finale of the epic, Daphne does not accidentally talk about a "funeral marriage" ^{[6, p. 249]}.