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{{short description|French essayist}}
{{Infobox writer
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| name = Étienne Pivert de Senancour
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| image = [[image:Senancour.jpg|thumb|238px|center]]
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| birth_date = {{Birth date|1770|11|6}}
| birth_place = Paris
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1846|1|10|1770|11|6}}
| death_place = St. Cloud
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| occupation = Writer
| spouse = Marie-Françoise Daguet
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| children = Agathe Eulalie Ursule Pivert de Senancour Jacques Balthazar Pivert de Senancour Florian Julien Pivert de Senancour
| parents = Claude-Laurent Pivert Marie-Catherine Pivert
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| notable_works = ''Obermann''
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| movement = Pre-Romanticism
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'''Étienne Pivert de Senancour''' (sometimes written '''Sénancour''', 5/6 November 1770–10 January 1846){{refn|group=lower-alpha|There is some confusion as to Senancour’s exact name. It sometimes appears as “Étienne Jean Baptiste Pierre Ignace Pivert de Senancour,” even with the title of vicomte attached to it, but there is no surviving, definitive birth record for him, the civil registers for the years preceding 1860 all having been destroyed during the Paris Commune in May 1871. His biographer Merlant spells Senancour with an ''accent aigu'' over the ''e''; the Bibliotheque Nationale lists him in their records simply as “Étienne Pivert de Senancour.”}} was a [[France|French]] [[Essay|essayist]] remembered primarily for his [[epistolary novel]] ''[[Obermann (novel)|Obermann]]''. He also wrote using the [[Pen name|pseudonyms]] ''Le citoyen Pivert'', ''Rêveur des Alpes'', and ''Le solitaire des Vosges''.<ref name=":0">Joachim Merlant, ''Sénancour: (1770-1846): poète, penseur religieux et publiciste: sa vie, son oeuvre, son influence: documents inconnus ou inédits'' (Paris: Fischbacher, 1907).</ref><ref>H.G. Schenk, ''The Mind of the European Romantics'' (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1966), xx.</ref><ref>Cherie D. Abbey & Janet Mullane (eds.), N''ineteenth-Century Literature Critcism, Vol. 16: Exccerpts from Criticism of the Works of Novelists, Poets, Playwrights, Short Story Writers, Philosophers, and Other Creative Writers Who Died Between 1800 and 1899, from the First Published Critical Appraisals to Current Evaluations'' (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1987), 416.</ref><ref>Étienne Pivert de Senancour, ''Aldomen, ou Le bonheur dans l'obscurité'' (Paris: Chez Leprieur, Libraire, 1794).</ref>

==Life==
Senancour was born in [[Paris]], the only child of first cousins Claude-Laurent and Marie-Catherine Pivert. His father, a ''contrôleur alternatif des Rentes de l’Hôtel de Ville'',{{refn|group=lower-alpha|An official whose job it was to check the validity of interest payments.}} having purchased the office in 1774, added “de Senancour” to his surname. His parents shared a deep devotion to [[Catholicism]], but came to regret their marriage and instead both wished for the life of the [[cloister]], a calling they hoped their son might follow instead. Senancour’s mother provided her son with a [[Jansenist]] education, before sending him to a [[boarding school]] near [[Ermenonville]]. His father was emotionally distant, while by contrast his mother was frequently fussy and overly attentive; the result was a melancholy childhood filled with boredom and solitude. The family was quite wealthy, and lived on the [[Rue Saint-Denis]], near [[Saint-Sépulcre]], the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.<ref name=":0" /><ref>Michel Orcel, "Rêveries d’un corps dans les Alpes (Senancour)" (Éditions Belin: ''Po&sie'' 2006/2 N° 116), 124.</ref><ref>[https://essentiels.bnf.fr/fr/article/e3f412b0-45d5-46db-bab2-c3707185e4dd-etienne-senancour-melancolique-et-preromantique "Étienne de Senancour, mélancolique et préromantique"] at BnF Essentiels.</ref><ref>Jean-Marc Vasseur. “Étienne Pivert de Senancour dans le Valois.” ''Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de La France'' 115, no. 1 (2015): 169–89. <nowiki>http://www.jstor.org/stable/24722107</nowiki>.</ref>

Senancour studied with a [[curé]] in the vicinity of [[Ermenonville]] before being sent to the [[University of Paris|Collège de la Marche]]. His father wanted him to enter the seminary of [[Saint-Sulpice (Paris)|Saint-Sulpice]] to become a [[priest]]. To avoid a profession for which he had no vocation, Senancour, with the help of his mother, fled to Switzerland in 1789. On 11 September 1790, he married Marie-Françoise Daguet with whom he had two children: a daughter [[Eulalie de Senancour|Eulalie]] (1791) who would later follow in her father's footsteps and become a writer, and a son, Florian-Julien (1793), who went on to pursue a career in the military.{{Citation needed|date=December 2019}} The marriage was not a happy one; his wife refused to accompany him to the Alpine solitude he desired, and they settled in [[Fribourg]].

His absence from France at the outbreak of the [[French Revolution|Revolution]] was interpreted as hostility to the new government, and his name was included in the list of [[émigrés]]. He visited France from time to time by stealth, but he only succeeded in saving the remnants of a considerable fortune. In 1799 he published in Paris his ''[[Rêveries sur la nature primitive de l'homme]]'', a book containing impassioned descriptive passages which mark him out as a precursor of the [[romantic movement]]. His parents and his wife died before the close of the century, and Senancour was in Paris in 1801 when he began ''Obermann'', which was finished in Switzerland two years later, and printed in 1804. This singular book, which has never lost its popularity with a limited class of readers, was followed in the next year by a treatise ''[[De l'amour (1806 book)|De l'amour]]'', in which he attacked the accepted social conventions. During this period, he worked at the magazine ''[[Mercure de France]]'' where he made the acquaintance of [[Louis-Sébastien Mercier]] and [[Charles Nodier]].

Senancour might have spent his life writing in complete obscurity were it not for a charge leveled against him by a public prosecutor for slandering religion in the second edition of his ''Résumé de l'histoire des traditions morales et religieuses'' (1827) wherein he described [[Jesus]] as a "youthful sage". He was initially found guilty and sentenced to nine months in prison and fined 300 francs, but the penalties were dropped on appeal. Attention to the case from the liberal press increased Senancour's standing, and many of his works were rediscovered and republished. The author revised and expanded ''Obermann'' for the 1833 edition.

''Obermann'', which is to a great extent inspired by [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Rousseau]], was edited and praised successively by [[Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve|Sainte-Beuve]] and by [[George Sand]], and had a considerable influence both in France and England. It is a series of letters supposed to be written by a [[Solitude|solitary]] and [[Melancholia|melancholy]] person, whose headquarters are placed in a lonely valley of the [[Jura mountains|Jura]]. The idiosyncrasy of the book in the large class of [[The Sorrows of Young Werther|Wertherian]]-[[George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron|Byronic]] literature consists in the fact that the hero, instead of feeling the vanity of things, recognizes his own inability to be and do what he wishes. Danish literary critic [[Georg Morris Cohen Brandes|Georg Brandes]] pointed out that while [[François-René de Chateaubriand|Chateaubriand]]'s [[novella]] [[René (novella)|''René'']] was appreciated by some of the ruling spirits of the century, ''Obermann'' was understood only by highly gifted, sensitive temperaments, usually strangers to success.

Senancour was tinged to some extent with the older [[philosophe]] form of [[Free thought|free-thinking]], and had no sympathy with the [[Catholic]] reaction. Having no resources but his pen, Senancour was driven to hack-work during the period which elapsed between his return to France (1803) and his death at Saint-Cloud; but some of the charm of ''Obermann'' is to be found in the ''[[Libres Méditations d'un solitaire inconnu]]''. [[Adolphe Thiers|Thiers]] and [[Abel-François Villemain|Villemain]] successively obtained for Senancour from [[Louis-Philippe of France|Louis Philippe]] pensions which enabled him to pass his last days in comfort. Senancour also authored the comedic drama ''[[Valombré]]'' (1807), and late in life wrote a second novel in letters entitled ''[[Isabelle (novel)|Isabelle]]'' (1833). He composed his own epitaph, "''Eternité, sois mon asile''".

==In music and poetry==
Between 1848 and 1854, [[Franz Liszt]] composed ''Vallée d'Obermann'', one of the pieces for piano of the suite ''Première année: Suisse'', from the œuvre ''[[Années de pèlerinage]]'', inspired by Senancour's most famous novel.

Senancour is immortalized for English readers in two poems by [[Matthew Arnold]] entitled ''Stanzas in Memory of the Author of Obermann''(1849) and ''Obermann Once More'' (1867)''.''

==Works==
* (1792) ''[https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8614606m '''Les Premiers Ages. Incertitudes humaines''']''
* (1793) ''[https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1040201c '''Sur les Générations actuelles, absurdités humaines''']''
* (1795) ''[https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k118989k '''Aldomen ou le bonheur dans l'obscurité''']''
* (1799) '''''[https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k105088b Rêveries sur la nature primitive de l'homme]'''''
* (1804) ''Oberman'' (changed to ''Obermann'' in subsequent editions)
* (1806) ''De l'amour''
* (1807) ''Valombré''
* (1814) ''Lettre d'un habitant des Vosges sur MM. Buonaparte, de Chateaubriand, Grégoire, Barruel''
* (1815) ''De Napoléon''
* (1815) ''Quatorze juillet 1815''
* (1816) ''Observations critiques sur l'ouvrage intitulé "Génie du christianisme", suivies de réflexions sur les écrits de Monsieur de Bonald''
* (1819) ''Libres Méditations d'un solitaire inconnu''
* (1824) ''Résumé de l'histoire de la Chine''
* (1825) ''Résumé de l'histoire des traditions morales et religieuses''
* (1833) ''Petit vocabulaire de simple vérité''
* (1833) ''Isabelle''

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=lower-alpha}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}
{{EB1911|wstitle=Senancour, Étienne Pivert de|volume=24|page=634}}
==External links==
* {{Internet Archive author|sname=Étienne-Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Ignace Pivert de Senancour |sopt=w}}

{{Romanticism}}

{{Authority control}}

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