Stendhal (1783–1842)

I have enjoyed rereading Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) by Stendahl. It is a historical psychological novel in two volumes, published in 1830, that chronicles the attempts of a provincial young man to rise socially beyond his lowly upbringing through a combination of intelligence, talent, hard work, deception, and hypocrisy. He ultimately allows his passions to betray him.

While the novel is usually classified as a bildungsroman or novel of education, in entitling it Le Rouge et show more le Noir: Chronique du XIXe siècle (The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the 19th Century) Stendhal suggests a two-fold literary purpose as both a psychological portrait of the romantic protagonist, Julien Sorel, and an analytic, sociological satire of the French social order under the Bourbon Restoration. The title refers to the tension between the clerical (black) and secular (red) interests of the protagonist, which is a matter of some debate.

The story tells of a young man, Julien Sorel, whose provincial nature is inflamed with the passion of youth, a passion for the ideals of the Napoleonic age, but whose greatest passion is his ambition which, overwhelming any natural pudency, takes him to the heights and sets in motion his tragic fall. His passion is contrasted with his intellect which is strong enough to allow him to escape both his difficult home life and his lowly status. Stendhal is able to present his narrative with unmatched, for his time, psychological depth and realism. The love affairs of Julien and the political intrigues in which he participates are spellbinding for the reader even today. This novel truly presents a "mirror" of reality and provides an engaging challenge for the reader. The story presents a protagonist torn between his passion for the ideal of Napoleon represented by the red of the cavalry dragoons and the black of the bishops of the church. Ultimately he finds hypocrisy on all sides and turns upon one of his loves while rejecting his only true friend.

Stendhal repeatedly questions the possibility, and the desirability, of “sincerity”, because most of the characters, especially Julien Sorel, are acutely aware of having to play a role to gain social approval. In that 19th-century context, the word “hypocrisy” denoted the affectation of high religious sentiment; in The Red and the Black it connotes the contradiction between thinking and feeling. Le Rouge et le Noir is set in the latter years of the Bourbon Restoration (1814–30) and the days of the 1830 July Revolution that established the Kingdom of the French (1830–48). Stendhal was consciously writing a historical novel set in the present. The subtitle, "a chronicle of 1830," made his contemporary readers aware of not only the historical context of the novel but of their own lives as well. Julien's choice between the black of the Church and the red of the army was a decision that many of Stendhal's readers had to make themselves. His worldly ambitions are motivated by the emotional tensions, between his idealistic Republicanism (especially nostalgic allegiance to Napoleon), and the realistic politics of counter-revolutionary conspiracy, by Jesuit-supported legitimists, notably the Marquis de la Mole, whom Julien serves, for personal gain.

Even though Stendhal does not directly refer to the 1830 Revolution, he highlights the political tensions and corruption that had reached a recent boiling point. But this emphasis on history also serves as a warning to readers: Julien's failure to succeed in French society and his betrayal by M. Valenod present a foreboding distrust of the victorious liberal bourgeoisie. Would the death of the aristocracy mark the death of French society? Stendhal's comparison of the gamble of revolution to the red and black of a roulette wheel, presents a harrowing glimpse of the volatility of French politics--a vision that still fascinates readers today.

In his famous book of literary criticism, Deceit, Desire and the Novel, philosopher and critic René Girard identifies in Le Rouge et le Noir the triangular structure he denominates as “mimetic desire”, which reveals how a person’s desire for another is always mediated by a third party, i.e. one desires a person only when he or she is desired by someone else. Girard’s proposition accounts for the perversity of Julien's relationship with Mathilde, the daughter of the Marquis de la Mole. This becomes clear when he begins courting the widow Mme de Fervaques to pique Mathilde’s jealousy, but also for Julien’s fascination with and membership of the high society he simultaneously desires and despises.

To help achieve a literary effect, Stendhal headed each chapter with epigraphs—literary, poetic, historic quotations—that he attributed to others. The first book of the novel is headed with the following epigraph, "Truth, bitter truth." - Danton. This quote, presumably from the works of the famous revolutionary leader who was sent to the guillotine in 1794 by Robespierre is prescient in hindsight as we read of the rise and ultimate fall of young Julien. With its psychological insight, social criticism, and political intrigue this is still an exciting, even exhilarating read and truly a great book for all time. show less

I really like this Stendhal character. He may have written in the 1800's, but his prose is far easier to grasp and enjoy than other authors of the period. His writing is bold, emotional, and unafraid to speak its mind truthfully on many of the matters society chooses to ignore in order to benefit itself. It reads like an intellectual rant at times, angry and scathing and ultimately delightful in its keen critique of the hypocrisies that riddle the world of the novel. And what better way of show more exploring these issues than through Julien, a peasant from the province who rose to prominence, capturing not one but two of the most elevated hearts among the nobility. And what contrast between the two women! What is amazing about these love affairs is that the actions of the lovers are no less ridiculous than those of many literary romances, but Stendhal explores the reasoning behind them so thoroughly that it reads not like silly interactions, but like logical results of the characters' upbringings and educational experiences. It makes the ultimate conclusion that much more sorrowful, to know the characters were well and fully trapped in their reasoning taken mostly from books of historical prowess as well as philosophical teachings. They never had the real world experience to know that what works in writing rarely works in practice, and it takes an unfortunate end to teach them this. Plot points aside, I thoroughly enjoyed this social critique, one that didn't bother to fully hide behind its story, but thrust out its opinions in a manner that would stir the heart of any reader. show less

What recourse for the rural, ambitious and abused son of a French sawyer who wants to rise above his station but to join the army? Except that France is embroiled in a time of peace in the 1820s, so he turns instead to the church though Napoleon is his hero. He will be a man of peace, though he doesn't believe a single word of liturgy or of the Latin Bible he's memorized word and verse. Soon after he is entering Parisian society in the company of the nobility, where his own brand of innate show more pride suits the company. His own pride is more genuine, being based neither on birth nor wealth. It is both a flaw in his character and a strength as well. His lack of self-doubt - or self-awareness - gives him an edge in his ambitions. In fact it is probably their entire impetus, driving everything he does. He does experience real love, but only after his pride leads him into it; never does it come first.

Stendhal's failing is his pacing, especially in the early chapters. He breezes over incidents that could have yielded an abundance of drama, and dwells for pages mining it from scenes that have little to offer. Consequently I'd find myself struggling through it one day, then more deeply absorbed the next. For a man so driven by his ambition, it's curious to observe how little of Julien's story is actually driven by himself. Nearly every step forward is achieved either through chance or by the good will of a mentor. His prodigious memory and a strong work ethic win him recognition, but Julian has no plan. When he does indulge a willful passion, it is only one liable to place all of his gains at risk. These insights are beyond his means to apprehend, given his lack of self-reflection. As things turn out, it's a mercy the illusion holds. show less

When I visited Venice in 2024, I was struck by the dull hues of the paintings in the Doge’s Palace. Unwittingly outing myself as an art naïf, I asked our tour guide if this was a mark of Venetian culture, only to learn that the original paintings had been bright and vivid. Time’s hand, not the artist’s, was responsible for a majestic flatness shared by The Most Serene Republic itself, once master of Mediterranean waves and now a tourist trap for gawking Americans.

Napoleon Bonaparte show more was equally responsible for the humiliation of Venice and the ennui of France in Stendahl’s novel “The Red and the Black,” set in the author’s present day of 1830. Like the Doge’s paintings, the France trudging through its post-Napoleonic hangover is a drab shell. For Julien Sorel, son of a provincial carpenter and closet worshiper of the late master of Europe, the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy is a roadblock to ambition. The day of the common man rising on the strength of his own courage has passed, so the only way to rise now is to play the aristocrats' game better than they do.

As a protagonist, Julien is complicated in ways that are unsettling in these latter days of #MeToo. Julien is blessed with three assets only: an eidetic memory, intense masculine energy, and insatiable ambition. The first opens the circles of great men, the second opens the legs of their ladies, and both support the ravenous hunger of the third. Julien is a climber with a hatred of his social betters fueled by his own insecurities; and one who believes that when the lords of France have lost all heart, only a fool would sacrifice his power to their impotence. But because Julien is a man of feeling, he has a habit of falling in love with his female conquests, and love has a way of undercutting ambition at its roots.

Julien may not be an admirable man, at least not by my standards; but he draws the eye because he’s a meteor cutting across a twilight of fixed stars. The men of the provinces care for nothing but their accounts receivable, the Church is a pack of factions and mercenaries, and Parisian elites scuttle from drawing room to drawing room jumping at shadows of resurgent Jacobins or the poison pens of a hostile liberal press. Ambition rises no further than clinging to what you have; so when a man with Julien’s drive encounters a provincial Madame de Rênal or a Parisian Mathilde de La Mole, they sense in him the dangerous attraction of a flame France hasn’t seen in 15 years.

The thing is, even dangerous flames burn dimly in a pedestrian age. No one is inspired by the corpse of a nation propped up by France’s enemies and animated less by a great soul than by petty politics and grubby merchants. Julien yearns for Napoleon’s splendor, aristocrats yearn for the ancien régime, Mathilde yearns for 16th-century chivalry, and Madame de Rênal is so thoroughly nailed into her class coffin that she doesn’t know enough to yearn for anything. When the glory departs from the temple, the inchoate egoism of a Julien is all that passes for holy fire. Stendahl’s life spanned the entirety of France’s glorious apocalypse, and he clearly found the post-apocalypse a dissatisfying farce. There’s a lesson here, I think, for Americans desperately searching the funhouse mirrors of social media for meaning in the unheroic ebb tide following the titanic tsunamis of the 20th century.

“The Red and the Black” is a profoundly psychological novel, and its lack of action will discourage some readers as surely as its ambiguous morality will discourage the virtuous. The interior lives of the main characters are frothy seas where each charts a lonely voyage of self-discovery or, more often, self-delusion. Prose that seems at first breathless, overwrought, and melodramatic gradually assumes the proportions of an uncomfortable truth: that we are each so infatuated with our own centrality to the universal story that our inner monologues are in fact breathless, and overwrought, and melodramatic. We adore the sounds of our own heartbeats and confuse that for love. We’re discontent with our time and confuse that with keen insight. This incestuous affair with our own souls blinds us not only to our own best interests, but also to the fact that we're not as special as we imagine. Everyone else, it turns out, is just as giddily writing private operas in which we occupy no greater role than supporting actors for their star performances. show less