Abstract

Michelet's historical writings blend the romantic characteristics of the erotic, the funereal, and the demoniac. These writings formedthe artistic expression of a personality obsessed with the erotic fantasies of death - particularly the death of women. Michelet believed that he was beckoned by the dead to resurrect their existence and to understand them better than they had understood themselves. He endeavored to identify himself with the dead in order to relive, rather than simply to collect, their experiences. Though called to his art, he feared its tendency to isolate him from nature, from common men, and from himself. He began to resolve this conflict in 1842 at the shrine of St. Sebald in Nuremburg, where he meditated upon Peter Vischer's self-portrait depicting the artist as a laborer. Michelet found harmony between his artistic nature and the world of common men by understanding history, his art, as his toil.