L'Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem ou la poétique de la désillusion

The Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem, published in 1811, related Chateaubriand's experience of a journey to Greece and Palestine during the years 1806-1807. It embodies his disappointments, his confrontation with reality. Nowhere can he find a meaningful contact with the past. In Greece, the monuments and the people are but remains of great civilizations. In Palestine, he finds a certain continuity with the medieval and Christian past, but it is a relationship devoid of meaning. How can man retain his past-personal as well as collective? For Chateaubriand it is only through imagination and memories that death can be exorcised and that the past will exist through artistic creation. Out of destruction and disillusionment, the Itinéraire recasts a new reality and becomes Chateaubriand's first attempt to re-create a personal and collective past. (FCA)