Benjamin CONSTANT demonstrates his keen admiration for Lord BYRON.

Benjamin CONSTANT (1767.1830)

Autograph letter signed to Charles Pictet de Rochemont.

Two pages in-4°. Autograph address.

Without place. January 9, 1818.

“I admire Lord Byron as much as you do. »

Requested by a long letter from Charles Pictet (of which we enclose the minute autograph), Benjamin Constant testifies to his admiration for Lord Byron and enthusiastically receives the project of translating the works of the British poet.

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“I am sorry, sir, if I did not respond sooner to the letter that you did me the honor of writing to me. Many occupations prevented me from doing so. I admire Lord Byron as much as you do , and I have no doubt of the pleasure that a translation such as you can produce would cause.  I don't have the universal library & don't know where to get it. I will find out about it: but if in your answer you tell me where it is, it will facilitate my searches which could be unsuccessful. I no longer have time to work at Mercure , but would you like to write the instructions? I promise to get it inserted. I am pleased that this occasion has reminded me of you and offer you my humble homage. B.Constant. »

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We enclose the autograph minute of the letter from Charles Pictet de Rochemont to Benjamin Constant (two pages large in-4°) dated December 20, 1817: “Sir, I do not know if you will not [sic] find that there It is indeed indiscreet to remind me of you by asking you for a favor. You are better placed than anyone to teach me what I want to know, and whatever advice you are willing to give me, I will follow it. You have read, I think in the original, the works of Lord Byron; & with the perfect knowledge that you have of the language, I have no doubt that you were struck by the beauties of this poetry . I tried imitations, & I gave them in the Uni [verselle] Library They seemed to please. They have shown the merit of these compositions which excite unexampled enthusiasm in England, and have already had ten editions. I have given the text alongside the first pieces (Childe H [arold] & le Pris [onnier] de Ch [illon] ) not for the small pretension of showing that my translation is quite literal, but so that those who read it The English had the opportunity to see that this poet is completely out of rank and were curious about his other works. This genre is so original, and so different, from what we are accustomed to, that it takes a little time to get used to it, and we only feel its full merit after an entire study at each time. new piece that I inserted. Have I had more admiration of Byron's talent. The Giaour & the Complaints of Tasso, which will succeed the Corsaire & Lara, will, I have no doubt, have an even greater effect, and will bring back with new interest the beauties of the first works. But our small Geneva public, while people write to me from Germany & Italy, a few letters from France itself, does nothing to encourage me to the complete translation of Byron's works, until I know if Paris will pay attention to it. It is on this that I take the liberty of submitting to you, Sir. If you find that the great reputation of L [ord] B [yron] in Europe gives the thing sufficient importance, I ask you to read the pieces published in the Univ Library . Your Judge[men]t will decide for me. If you approve of this project, and if you consider it useful for its success to include a notice on these fragments in the Mercury, I would be very grateful and even glorious for my very small part as translator. I have the honor…”

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In 1816, by chance of a note on translations from Italian, Charles Pictet de Rochemont (1755-1824) noticed in the Bibliothèque Universelle, the Geneva review of which he was one of the founders, that it would be desirable to see published French translations of Lord Byron and Walter Scott "who, in different genres, today support the glory of English Parnassus". This note already set the tone and, because one is never better served than by oneself, Pictet began the following year, then in 1818 and 1819, to publish his translations. He began with extracts from the third song of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, The Prisoner of Chillon, The Corsair, Lara and Giaour. Then he gave in the following volume The Complaints of Tasso, The Siege of Corinth and extracts from the fourth canto of Childe Harold, etc.

In 1820, two volumes were published by the Genevan publisher JJ Paschoud entitled: Choice of Poems by Byron, Walter Scott and Moore. The title page announces a “free translation by one of the editors of the Universal Library” – that is to say by Charles Pictet.

Works of Lord Byron from 1819 (ten volumes published until 1821), a text which would be corrected and expanded several times in the following years, the translation of Charles Pictet exerted an influence to which Lamartine testified. His friend Louis de Vignet, passing through Geneva, acquired from the bookseller Paschoud the volumes of the Universal Library which he sent to him. “A book,” Lamartine later wrote, “is an event in the life of the soul: it is sometimes a revolution… The poems of Lord Byron found me in one of those pre-existing dispositions which prepare for the poet the silent audience of all the senses and all the imagination. It was in 1818; I listened to the silence of the century, and I heard no voice according to my heart, when it suddenly vibrated in the drowsy air. »

Above all, in a letter to Murray dated October 12, 1820, Byron himself judged the hasty translation of Pichot and Salle “very inferior” to that of Charles Pictet. Reporting Moore's words saying that “the French had caught the contagion of Byronism to the highest pitch”, he adds: “The Paris translation is also very inferior to the Geneva one, which is very fair, though in prose also. »

The meeting of the Geneva scholar and the French writer and political theorist around the great literary figure of Lord Byron, then alive, is moving: it marks a date in the history of romanticism.