Adonis Diaries

Love Passion Stories: Juliette & Rene; (August 25, 2009)

The French Juliette Recamier, during the period of Napoleon, was one of the most beautiful of the ladies to sit for painters.  Juliette barely talked: she was the mute goddess , but she was highly literate and a famous actress that posed for many painters.  The beauty of Juliette reached the confines of Siberia where natives had her picture painted on glass.

Princes, bankers, generals, poets, and famous authors were after the favors of Mrs. Recamier.  She never repulsed anyone, but never welcomed anyone at her residence. She was the sultana of “one thousand and one mornings”. The sharp critics Saint-Beuve wrote: “Mrs. Recamier wants everything to stop in April”.

There were many rumors on her physical sexual impotence for her lack of varied encounters; the author Merimee used to raise his arms and say “it is a case of force major”.  Deeper analysis is showing that Mrs. Recamier suffered from a major psychological handicap: Juliette believed that she married her own father at the age of 15, the boyfriend of her mother. Her first husband may or may not be her genetic father, but what people believe is what counts in practical life.

The French giant writer Rene de Chateaubriand fell passionately in love countless of times; he even traveled to the Near East and Palestine as an excuse to land in Spain where he was to meet another one of his conquest.  Rene was visiting Venice for the second time; he was 65 of age and he wrote a name on the sand.  Rene said “What am I doing around the steppe of the Adriatic? Follies of age closer to the cradle: I wrote a name close to the dying waves; the waves kept eating up the name ,one character at a time, to the sixteenth character; I felt that they were erasing my life.”  The name was Juliette Recamier.

Juliette was madly in love with the literary genius of Rene de Chateaubriand and wrote to him: “It no longer depends on me, or of you, or of anyone to prevent me of loving you; my love, my life, my heart, everything is yours”

Chateaubriand replied “I have but one feeling and but one joy: finish my life by you…There will be a great charm going protected by your looks, your words, and your attachment. And then God, the sky, and you beyond life…” Rene died in the arms of Juliette who was already blind.  Juliette survived Rene a few months.

Intelligent women of the 18^th century described seduction processes grandly.  Mrs. de Stael said of one of her male suitors “Talking is not one of his languages”.  Julia Talma said to her boyfriend Benjamin Constant “If only you could give the impression of existing”