Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney
Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney | |
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Philosopher, historian, orientalist and politician |
Constantin François de Chassebœuf,
Life
Early life and the French Revolution
Volney was born at
.He embarked on a journey to the East in late 1782 and reached Egypt, where he spent nearly seven months. He then lived for nearly two years in Greater Syria, in what today is
He was a member both of the
Volney tried to put his politico-economic theories into practice in
Later life
In 1795 he undertook a journey to the United States, where he was accused (1797) by
He was not a partisan of
He died in Paris and was buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery.
Thomas Jefferson's translation of Volney's Ruins of Empires
English translations of Volney's Ruins began appearing within a year or so of its first French edition[5] but sometime during Volney's stay in the United States, he and Thomas Jefferson entered into a secret arrangement whereby Jefferson agreed to make a new English translation of the work. Volney visited Monticello for two weeks during June 1796. The two men also met on several occasions at the American Philosophical Society, of which Volney had been made a member in 1797.[6] Jefferson was President of APS at the time and sponsored Volney's induction into the organization. These meetings provided the two men with ample opportunity to conceive and discuss the translation project.[7]
Jefferson, then serving as Vice President under John Adams, appreciated the book's central theme – that empires rise if government allows enlightened self-interest to flourish. This theme, Jefferson believed, represented an excellent summary of the Enlightenment-based principles upon which the U.S. was founded. However, Jefferson insisted that his translation be published only for certain readers, due to the book's controversial religious content. Jefferson was preparing to make a bid for the Presidency of the United States in 1800; he was worried his Federalist opponents would attack him as an atheist, if it were known he translated Volney's supposedly heretical book.[citation needed]
According to the evidence discovered by the French researcher
From this we conclude, that, to live in harmony and peace...we must trace a line of distinction between those (assertions) that are capable of verification, and those that are not; (we must) separate by an inviolable barrier the world of fantastical beings from the world of realities...[10]
Since Jefferson did not have time to complete the translation project, the last four chapters were translated by Joel Barlow, an American land speculator and poet living in Paris. Barlow's name then became associated with the entire translation, further obscuring Jefferson's role in the project.[11]
Christ myth theory
Volney and
In Egypt and Syria
In describing
His story, the Voyage to Egypt and Syria had earned its author the suffrage of
A Late Marriage
Remaining single until 1810, he later married a cousin, Mademoiselle Gigault, with whom he would live "in polite agreement" with. Since his marriage, he gave up his house on Rue de la Catherine de La Rochefoucauld. He then acquired a hotel located on the Rue de Vaugirard , remarkable above all for the pleasantness of a very extensive garden. He remained gruff and sullen to the rest of the world .
Selected publications
- Travels in Syria and Egypt, During the Years 1783, 1784, & 1785 (Volume 1, Volume 2, 1788)
- The Ruins: Or a Survey of the Revolutions of Empires (1796)
- New Researches on Ancient History (1819)
- The Ruins; Or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires: And The Law of Nature (1890)
Legacy
- Volney, New York was named after him.
- Volney, Iowa was named after him.
- Volney, Virginia was named after him.
- francs.
- The Volney Hotels in New York, Paris and Saumur were named after him.[20]
- Rue Volney was named after him in Paris, Angers, Mayenne, Brest, Lyon, Saumur and Clermont-Ferrand.
- Boulevard Volney in Rennes, France and Laval, France.
- Place Volney in Craon, France.
- An amphitheatre of the Faculty of Law, Economics and Management of the University of Angers bears his name.
- Collège Volney in Craon, France.
- Laval (Mayenne).
- Cercle Volney was a circle of Artists and Writers in Paris.
Those are some of the places and things in the
See also
- Volney prize
- Les Neuf Sœurs
- Society of the Friends of Truth
- Prix Volney - Wikipedia, in French
- Volney - Wikipedia, in French
References
- ^ "Monument à Volney – Craon | E-monumen". 4 March 2013.
- ^ a b c d public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Volney, Constantin François Chassebœuf, Comte de". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 196. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ Morais, Herbert Montfort. (1960). Deism in Eighteenth Century America. Russell & Russell. p. 120
- ISBN 0-7735-1442-2
- ^ The British Library English Short Title Catalogue cites several English translations published in London up to the mid-1790s, the earliest being a 1792 edition published by J. Johnson (ESTC T212858). The earliest American edition cited is that printed by William A. Davis in New York in 1796 (ESTC W22036).
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2021-03-31.
- ^ Jean Gaulmier's L’Ideologue Volney, Slatkine Reprints, 1980; Gilbert Chinard's Volney et L’Amerique, Johns Hopkins Press, 1923; and minutes of meetings of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA (1795-98).
- ^ Gilbert Chinard, "Volney et L’Amerique," Johns Hopkins Press, 1923.
- ^ "From Thomas Jefferson to Volney, 17 March 1801,"". Founders Online, National Archives, version of January 18, 2019, [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 33, 17 February–30 April 1801, ed. Barbara B. Oberg. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006, pp. 341–342. Retrieved January 28, 2019.
- ^ See Chapter 24 of the Jefferson-Barlow translation of Ruins of Empires.
- ^ Levrault of Paris published two editions of the so-called Jefferson-Barlow translation: 1802 and 1817. Bossange Freres of Paris also published an edition in 1820, the year of Volney's death. In the United States, Dixon and Sickles of New York published the first American edition of the Jefferson-Barlow translation in 1828. The Jefferson-Barlow translation then went through several reprints during the 19th and 20th centuries, including: Gaylord of Boston (1830s), Calvin Blanchard of New York (no date), Josiah Mendum of Boston (1880s), Peter Eckler of New York (1890s & 1910s-20s), and The Truth Seeker Press of New York (1950). See: Jean Gaulmier, cited above, and Nicole Hafid-Martin, Volney: Bibliographie Des Ecrivains Francais, 1999. The Jefferson-Barlow edition is easily identifiable by this simple test: turn to the Invocation at the front of the book. The first sentence should read: "Hail solitary ruins, holy sepulchres and silent walls! you I invoke; to you I address my prayer!" A copy of the Jefferson-Barlow edition is also available on-line at Gutenberg.org (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1397)
- ISBN 1-56338-280-6
- ISBN 978-3-631-59688-3"Charles F. Dupuis and Constantin-Francois Chasseboeuf, Comte de Volney, were the first to openly deny the historicity of Jesus; they regarded him as a mythological figure and the Gospels as presentations of a myth of predominantly astral nature."
- ISBN 0-8028-4368-9.
- ISBN 978-0-8122-4261-4
- ^ Wells, G. A. "Stages of New Testament Criticism," Journal of the History of Ideas, volume 30, issue 2, 1969
- ^ Roberts, Geoff (2011) Jesus 888 Troubador Publishing pg 144
- ^ "Were George Washington and Thomas Jefferson Jesus Mythicists?". 21 November 2019.
- ^ Volney, Comte Constantin François de Chasseboeuf de (1787). Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte, pendant les années 1783, 1784 et 1785: avec deux cartes géographiques et deux planches gravées représentant les Ruines du Temple du Soleil à Balbek, et celles de la ville de Palmyre, dans le désert de Syrie (in French). Desenne.
- ^ "The Volney at 23 East 74th St. In Lenox Hill".
Further reading
- Borowski, Audrey. "The universal history to bring all universal histories to an end: the curious case of Volney" Intellectual History Review (2023) https://doi.org/10.1080 /17496977.2023.2179907 [1]
- Caron, Nathalie. "Friendship, Secrecy, Transatlantic Networks and the Enlightenment: The Jefferson-Barlow Version of Volney's Ruines (Paris, 1802)." Mémoires du livre/Studies in Book Culture 11.1 (2019). online
- Furstenberg, François. When the United States Spoke French: Five Refugees Who Shaped a Nation. New York: Penguin (2014).
- Katschnig, Gerhard. "The supportive voice in the midst of solitude and melancholy: Volney's génie des tombeaux et des ruines." History of European Ideas 47.6 (2021): 958–973.
- Kim, Minchul. "Volney and the French Revolution." Journal of the History of Ideas 79.2 (2018): 221–242.
External links
- Works by Constantin-François Volney at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney at Internet Archive
- The Ruins; or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires, and the Law of Nature of Nature, an English edition republished in 1920, PDF format
- Volney's Travels through Syria and Egypt, using the 'short s'. This version of the text does not use the long s, and may be easier for contemporary readers to understand.