Reading Order
Dix Ans d'exilDix Ans d'exil Reading Order
Dix Ans d'exil (Ten Years of Exile, written 1810-13, published posthumously 1821) by Germaine de Staël is the memoir of her decade of wandering under Napoleonic persecution — from her expulsion from Paris, through her years at Coppet on Lake Geneva, her escape to Vienna and then Russia during Napoleon's invasion, her crossing of Russia as the Grande Armée advanced, and her eventual arrival in Stockholm and London. The book is one of the most vivid first-person accounts of the Napoleonic era written by someone who was simultaneously its opponent and its witness — Staël watched the Grande Armée march toward Russia from the inside of Russia, visited Moscow weeks before it burned, and fled across the Baltic to safety. It is a book about exile and persecution, but also about the experience of being a woman of extraordinary intellectual gifts who is hunted by the most powerful man in Europe because he finds her ideas dangerous. The literary quality of Dix Ans d'exil is very high — Staël writes with speed, vividness, and a political sharpness that makes her account of the courts of Vienna, the cultural world of Vilnius, and the landscape of Russia some of the finest travel writing of the era.
Where to start
Start at the beginning — the account of her Paris exile and the years at Coppet — and read through to the Russian escape. The Russian section (roughly the second half) is the most dramatic and is what most readers find unforgettable.
Complete Dix Ans d'exil Book List
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Dix Ans d'exil
Germaine de Staël·1821·Available in French in modern editions from Fayard and Gallimard; translated into English as Ten Years of Exile in Victorian translations (George Bell, 1821); a modern English translation is available in selected passages in various Staël anthologies. - Buy
De l'Allemagne
OptionalGermaine de Staël·1813·The intellectual work that provoked Napoleon's suppression and was being completed during the exile years — reading the two together clarifies what Staël was doing and why.
Dix Ans d'exil — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Dix Ans d'exil about?
Dix Ans d'exil is Germaine de Staël's memoir of the decade from 1803 to 1813 during which Napoleon kept her exiled from Paris and eventually from all of France and its occupied territories. The book covers her years at Coppet (the Necker family estate on Lake Geneva, which became a salon for European intellectuals visiting or fleeing Napoleon), her attempts to obtain permission to return to Paris, her growing persecution as Napoleon's power extended across Europe, and her dramatic escape in 1812: she traveled through Vienna, Poland, and into Russia just as Napoleon's Grande Armée was advancing, crossed Russia from south to north, and escaped via St. Petersburg and Finland to Stockholm, where her son was serving as an aide-de-camp to Bernadotte. She eventually reached London, where De l'Allemagne was published. The book is both a political memoir (a portrait of Napoleonic tyranny from the inside) and a travel book (some of the finest French writing on Russia, Poland, and Scandinavia from the period).
What is the relationship between Staël and Napoleon?
Germaine de Staël was Napoleon's most significant literary opponent, and their relationship was one of the defining cultural antagonisms of the First Empire. Staël had been a major figure in pre-Revolutionary Paris and a supporter of the liberal constitutional monarchy that the Revolution's early phase seemed to promise; when Napoleon came to power and turned toward autocracy, she became a critic. Napoleon exiled her from Paris in 1803 (she was allowed to stay within forty leagues of the capital) and eventually extended the exclusion to all of France and its satellites. He suppressed De l'Allemagne in 1810 and tried to prevent her from publishing or circulating her ideas anywhere in Europe. From his perspective, she was dangerous not because she organized political opposition (she did not) but because she represented the intellectual world — the world of ideas, literature, and conversation — that existed outside his control and that his regime could not simply command into silence. Staël understood this clearly and wrote about it with considerable analytical precision in Dix Ans d'exil.
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