Remembrance of the Tomb (Volume 1, 2, 3)

Author: (French) Chateaubriand / Cheng Yirong / Guan Xiaoming, etc.
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2005-06-01
Features: This book is widely recognized as a timeless masterpiece of great artistic value in Western literary history. Published in 1848, it is not merely a record of the author's private life but a monumental and epic work in literature. It documents the author's life and thoughts, as well as the history and culture of his country and his era. Ga?tan Pigeon, in A History of the Century in Literature, called this book a model of modern Western fiction. Pierre Brunet, in A History of Nineteenth-Century French Literature, regarded it as a work by a modern novelist that Marcel Proust acknowledged as completely unlike classical novels, believing it marked the emergence of a new kind of person and modern literature. This book is one of the most important works by Chateaubriand, immortalizing his name in the memories of people and securing him a permanent place in history and fame. The great writer Hugo once wrote in a primary school assignment: "Either become Chateaubriand, or achieve nothing." An epitaph can refer to the poetic or prose inscriptions on a tombstone or any commemorative text resembling an epitaph. This Memoirs from Beyond the Grave can also be considered a kind of epitaph the author wrote for himself. As the saying goes, "When a bird is about to die, its name is mourned; when a person is about to die, their words are virtuous." This monumental work, completed two years before the author's death, truly reflects his innermost thoughts. The theme of this genuine work is the lamentation of loss, mourning the brevity of life, and grieving the passage of time. With words and his pen, he struggles against the relentless march of time. To hold onto the past, to hold onto the present, to hold onto the future—in the reminiscence of flowing years, I wish to climb once again the slopes of my beautiful past.
Romanticism enthusiasts or detractors, scholars or lovers of memoirs, biographers or admirers of biographical literature, researchers or haters of death culture, high school and university students—this old man, struggling against the passage of time, finally could not resist the relentless flow of time and completed his long journey from cradle to grave. Around the age of seventy, he chose a plot of land for his grave on a solitary island named Granville, outside the port of Saint-Malo. Ten years later, he was laid to rest there—without a tombstone, no inscription, no decoration—only a simple, unmarked stone with a rough cross standing atop it. Solitary, proud, and silent, he faced the sea. The epitaph of this grave is long and titled Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, containing words like: "Life is not suited to me, but perhaps death is more fitting for me." Greek and Roman graves were often located on the roadside outside the city; Egyptian graves were frequently by the banks of the Nile. But only the author's grave was chosen amidst the roaring waves of the sea.