The imagination of the people of the North rises beyond the boundaries of the land they inhabit, says Madame de Stall. It passes through the clouds that limit their horizons and seem to indicate the unexplained transition from life to eternity. Because the nations of the North are not as obsessed with pleasure as their sufferings, and therefore their imagination is much more fruitful." While "the people of the South continuously resort to the reproduction of all the feelings that arise in life, to the images of coolness, kite groves and clear streams: They can not imagine the delights of the soul without adding to them the thought of the beneficial influence of the thick shadow that must protect them from the blazing sunsets of the sun.
The writers of the South, according to the author, have an abundance of widespread interests, while writers in the North strike a thought that focuses on the most important existential problems, which reproduces the "miracles of passion and will. Referring to this rather intuitive insight, de Stall praises unreservedly the power of the creative genius of Shakespeare and Goethe and complains about French literature, which in the seventeenth century lost its usual openness to new and original ideas. In conclusion to the extensive comparison of the specific characteristics of the creative imagination of the two cultural regions of the Old Continent, de Stall tries to define the peculiar impulse that is imposed as a model of mental attitude among her young contemporaries. According to her, "the greatest thing that created man is inspired by the painful realization of the imperfection of his fate." "Intermediate minds are, in general, completely satisfied with their fate. They smooth out, so to say, their imperfect existence by complementing it when something is still lacking in their illusory illusions. But the uplifting of spirit, feelings and actions is only possible thanks to the urge to get out of the boundaries that limit our imagination. The heroism of morality, the enthusiasm of eloquence and the ambition of glory provide supernatural pleasures that need only those souls who are both exasperated and melancholy tired of everything that can be measured from everything transient to the end of everything, regardless of distance from them ". Some commentators of Madam de Stall's thoughts perceive them as the first attempt in the theory of French romanticism to define the emotional, somewhat pathological, setting-the "disease of the century".
The second part of the treatise "About Literature" is titled "For the present state of enlightenment in France and its future progress." With some radical reflection in her, de Stall generates the dislike of the ambitious powerboat Napoleon, who is not without reason afraid of the rapid spread of liberalism in the political life of post-revolutionary France. Indeed, the author predicts a recent upsurge in French literature but explicitly states that it will depend on the ability of the rulers to build solid social institutions that can guarantee the freedom and political equality of all individuals. In 1800, Madame de Stall's study "On the Influence of Passions on Individuals and Nations" was published in which he stated that "happiness for individuals is hope without fear, action without worry, glory without defamation, love without inconsistency, imagination which brightens what we own and deletes the memory of what we have lost, "and" happiness for the nations would be the reconciliation in harmony of the freedom of the republics with the tranquility of the monarchies, the competition of talents with the silence of the factions, directing the militaristic spirit outside, but paying tribute to the laws inward ":" The man who is doomed to the pursuit of perfect bliss would be the happiest of the people, "says Thales. The nation, which only seeks to achieve the last abstract boundaries of metaphysical freedom, would be the most miserable nation. " According to the romantic Madame de Stall, it is undisputed that "love is the most fatal of all passions for man's happiness." Love is often born of "what can not be explained." For men, "there is always a purpose in love, while the duration of this feeling is the only concern of women experiencing it." "Love is the story of women's lives," said de Stall, but it's just an episode in men's lives.