TALLEYRAND: The Art of Survival

by Jean Orieux ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1973

Slandered in his lifetime, and after his death excoriated by historians as a serpentine, amoral opportunist, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Perigord has waited a long time for a biographer who would take his part against the chorus of detractors. Last year Jack Bernard's Talleyrand cautiously began the long overdue rehabilitation. Orieux, in a brilliant, sweeping reassessment of the great aristocrat's character and career, goes much further than Bernard, indicting the ""bourgeois"" politicians and biographers who have vilified ""my hero,"" ""one of the greatest servants of France and Europe."" Orieux, who has probed deeply into Taileyrand's neglected and unloved childhood -- he was the disinherited, clubfoot, eldest son of one of France's greatest families -- sees this passionless sphinx as a man passionately and unwaveringly committed to the civilized values of Voltaire -- to peace, trade, prosperity, above all to ""a nation of enlightened citizens."" A best seller in France, this emotional and psychologically penetrating biography follows Talleyrand's amazing career from his pre-revolutionary days as Bishop of Autun through the Revolution and the Terror to his political reinstatement under the Directorate, his service to Napoleon and the ""betrayal"" of his imperial master at Erfurt, to his consummate diplomacy at the Congress of Vienna and his continued prominence under the restored Bourbons. Orieux's admiration for this political chameleon who served those he disdained and disdained those he served is unstinted: ""His weapons were his words, his dinner parties. . . his exquisite polish."" He incarnated in his proud, impeccable personage ""the link between pre- and post-revolutionary France""; to the ruffians who made the Revolution he was an exemplar of the Ancien Regime's civility; yet Orieux sees him politically as a farsighted traitor to his class and the obsolescent institutions it upheld. A ""sorcerer's apprentice"" in the Constituent Assembly he oiled the machinery of revolution, then endeavored bravely to curb its violent excesses. This is that rare book where adulation does not hinder scholarship; Orieux has provided us with the most convincing and compelling Talleyrand to date, a man who behind the facade of venality, hauteur and impassivity was a ""great, benevolent aristocrat of profound and secret sensibilities.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1973

Categories: NONFICTION