5/19/2012

May 19: Saint-Simon, the man who shot himself six times in the head

Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon lived a life of unexpected turns. Born an aristocrat, he risked his status to come to America and fight in the Revolutionary War, then amassed a fortune in the French Revolution - which he lost during the dissolution of a year-long marriage.

Saint-Simon's growing utopian-socialist views led him to announce that he was the Messiah, and to ask Lady Hester Stanhope - an English mystic and orientalist (see coming entry of June 23) to join him as a female Messianic counterpoint. Lady Stanhope declined, moving instead to the Holy Land to await the return of Jesus.

Saint-Simon's admirers included Napoleon III, and he exerted a wide influence over utopian movements of the 19th century. In 1823 he made a failed suicide attempt by shooting himself six times in the head, and merely blinding himself in one eye. His final work, "Nouveau Christianisme", was completed shortly before he died on this date in 1825.