Stendhal

Marie-Henri Beyle, known by his pen name Stendhal, was a French writer born on January 23, 1783, and passed away on March 23, 1842. He is best remembered for his novels Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) from 1830 and La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma) from 1839. His works are famous for their deep look into characters' feelings and thoughts, making him one of the first writers to use a style called realism.

Stendhal also wrote a book called De l'amour (On Love), where he talked about strong feelings between people. In this book, he introduced the idea of "crystallization," which describes how someone might start to feel deeply for another person. Though this book didn’t get much attention when it was first published, it is now praised for being one of the earliest smart looks at love.

Because of his smart understanding of people, Stendhal is often called a great thinker about human behavior, even before such a term was commonly used.

Life

Marie-Henri Beyle, known by the pen name Stendhal, was born on 23 January 1783 in Grenoble, France. He grew up in a bourgeois family and was close to his sister Pauline. As a young man, he served in Napoleon’s army and traveled to many places, including Germany and Russia. He saw Moscow burn during a retreat and later settled in Italy, where he felt happy and inspired.

Stendhal wrote famous novels like The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma. He was known for his sharp observations of people’s feelings and thoughts. Despite health problems in his later years, he kept writing until he passed away on 23 March 1842 in Paris.

Pseudonyms

Before choosing the name Stendhal, the writer used many pen names, such as "Louis Alexandre Bombet" and "Anastasius Serpière". The only book he published under his real name was The History of Painting in 1817. After that, he began using the name "M. de Stendhal, officier de cavalerie", taking it from the German city of Stendal. This city was important for travel between Berlin and Hanover and was also the birthplace of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, a well-known art historian.

Stendhal used many different names in his letters and writings, sometimes giving funny or strange names to his friends. He enjoyed using many identities and once wrote that changing who he was felt very happy to him.

Works

Stendhal's writing style was not fully understood during his time but gained recognition in the 20th century. He aimed his works at a select audience, which he called "the Happy Few." Stendhal was known for his deep look into characters' feelings and is seen as one of the first writers to use realism in his stories.

His most famous books are Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) from 1830 and La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma) from 1839. He also wrote many other novels, short stories, and books about music and travel. Stendhal loved the works of famous composers like Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and he even wrote a biography about the composer Gioacchino Rossini.

Novels

• Armance (1827)
• Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black, 1830)
• Lucien Leuwen (1835, unfinished, published 1894)
• The Pink and the Green (1837, unfinished)
• La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma)
• Lamiel (1839–1842, unfinished, published 1889)

Novellas

• Vanina Vanini (1829)
• Mina de Vanghel (1830, later published in the Paris periodical La Revue des Deux Mondes)
• Italian Chroniques, 1837–1839
  • Vittoria Accoramboni
  • The Cenci (Les Cenci, 1837)
  • The Duchess of Palliano (La Duchesse de Palliano)
  • The Abbess of Castro (L'Abbesse de Castro, 1832)

Biography

• A Life of Napoleon (1817–1818, published 1929)
• A Life of Rossini (1824)

Autobiography

Stendhal's brief memoir, Souvenirs d'Égotisme (Memoirs of an Egotist), was published after his death in 1892. Also published was a longer autobiographical work, pretending to be the Life of Henry Brulard.

• The Life of Henry Brulard (1835–1836, published 1890)
• Souvenirs d'égotisme (written in 1832 and published in 1892)
• Journal (1801–1817) (The Private Diaries of Stendhal)

Non-fiction

• Rome, Naples et Florence (1817)
• De l'amour (1822)
• Racine et Shakespéare (1823–1825) (Racine and Shakespeare)
• Voyage dans le midi de la France (1838; though first published after his death in 1930) (Travels in the South of France)

His other works include short stories, journalism, travel books (A Roman Journal), a famous collection of essays on Italian painting, and biographies of important people of his time, including Napoleon, Haydn, Mozart, Rossini and Metastasio.

Crystallization

Main article: Crystallization (love)

In his book De l'amour from 1822, Stendhal talked about how love starts. He used a trip from the city of Bologna to Rome as an example. In Bologna, people feel no special feelings toward someone they might fall in love with later. But when they start the journey toward Rome, feelings begin to grow naturally.

Stendhal described this growth in four steps: First, you admire the qualities of the person you like. Next, you feel happy that they seem interested in you. Then, you hope to win their love. Finally, you find great delight in thinking they are even more wonderful than they really are. He shared these ideas while visiting the Salzburg salt mine.

Critical appraisal

Many famous thinkers and writers praised Stendhal's work. Hippolyte Taine and Émile Zola admired how Stendhal described his characters in a very real and detailed way. Friedrich Nietzsche called Stendhal "France's last great psychologist" and enjoyed discovering his writings.

Ford Madox Ford said that Stendhal helped make novels more serious and deep. Erich Auerbach believed that Stendhal and Balzac started modern realism in their stories. He thought Stendhal's books showed the real life and problems of people in France before a big revolution.

Simone de Beauvoir liked how Stendhal gave his female characters their own stories and goals, not just linking them to the men. But she noted that even Stendhal still saw women mainly in relation to men.

Other writers had different views. Vladimir Nabokov did not think very highly of Stendhal, calling his style "paltry" and saying his famous book Le Rouge et le Noir was "much overrated." But Michael Dirda admired Stendhal as one of the greatest French writers, praising his novels, his autobiography, and his travel writing.

Stendhal syndrome

When the famous writer Stendhal first visited Florence in 1817, he felt very overwhelmed by all the beautiful art and history there. He wrote about feeling his heart race and being afraid he might fall over.

Much later, in 1979, a psychiatrist named Graziella Magherini noticed that some people visiting Florence for the first time felt similar ways—their hearts raced, they felt sick, or their heads spun. She named this feeling after Stendhal.

To honor him, a train company in Italy called Trenitalia named their night train from Paris to Venice the Stendhal Express.