Sainte-Beuve

Summary

Dominique Pagani quotes Sainte-Beuve mainly for a single judgement, which he repeats in almost the same words from 2014 to 2024: Sainte-Beuve is said to have predicted for Senancour "a discreet but faithful posterity"1. He brings this phrase back in sessions on very different subjects: the abecedary "Q comme Qualité"1, the series "Que faire ?"2, the session devoted to Arthur Adamov, a meeting during the lockdown period, a session on worldliness in Clouscard3 and another on illness, misfortune and evil4. The passages do not specify what he draws from this forecast. Each time, the phrase concerns Senancour rather than Sainte-Beuve himself. In 2023, in "De la débauche du sens à l'orgie du sentiment", he borrows another remark from him, this time about Montaigne: "Montaigne is the whole of nature without grace"5. This judgement sets nature against grace. The passages say nothing more about how he uses it.

1. 1Q for Quality31 Dec 2014 · 6:31
2. 2What is to be done? 3/329 Jan 2016 · 1:10:56
3. 3Worldliness in Clouscard: desiring what? Through whom?3 Sept 2023 · 28:56
4. 4Sickness, misfortune, evil20 Sept 2024 · 1:12:15
5. 5From the debauchery of sense to the orgy of sentiment29 May 2023 · 2:25:14

Summary produced automatically from 7 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.