Madame de Sévigné

Summary

Dominique Pagani brings up Madame de Sévigné for a single anecdote, which he repeats in almost the same words from 2014 to 2023: when crossing the Alps, she had the curtains of her carriage drawn so as not to see the mountains, which horrified her1. In one version, she is returning from Grignan. In another, it is the forests she refuses to look at, and he concludes that in the seventeenth century nature inspired horror2. He uses the anecdote to date a change in sensibility: the taste for mountains is new and appears with Rousseau3. It comes up in sessions on varied subjects, such as the myth of the noble savage in Rousseau, the question of whether the Beautiful can be learned, a session devoted to Madame de Staël, and "De la débauche du sens à l'orgie du sentiment"4. Each time, it shows that the way people see nature has a history and that one learns to find beautiful what at first seemed frightening.

1. 1#3 The myth of the noble savage in Rousseau23 Sept 2014 · 3:40
2. 2Education: can beauty be learned?20 Jul 2018 · 22:58
3. 3What is to be done? 3/329 Jan 2016 · 23:17
4. 4From the debauchery of sense to the orgy of sentiment29 May 2023 · 16:45

Summary produced automatically from 10 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.