The Red and The Black by Stendhal

The Red and the Black by Stendhal (1830, 532 pages-translated by Roger Gard in 2002 from the French)

The Red and the Black by Stendhal (pen name for Henry Marie Beyle-1783 to 1842-France) has been on my  read soon list for a very long time.     The Red and the Black is on pretty much all lists of 100 best novels and on many top ten lists.     I recently read and posted on his one other canon status work,  The Charterhouse of Parma.      Of the two, The Red and the Black is the most still read.    I think anyone who reads one of these two books will want to go on to read the other one.     There simply is no higher status canon writer of the 19th century than Stendhal, not even Tolstoy or Flaubert or Dickens.      He has a few peers but no superiors.     I have said before that the modern Japanese novel came into existence via young Japanese men with elite education being creatively stimulated by the greats of 19th century French literature.     For these writers, above all this meant Stendhal.    Kenzaburo Oe  among many others studied French literature before he began to write his great works.    Michio Takeyama, author of one of the very best novels about WWII from the point of view of a Japanese soldier The Burmese Harp  carried a copy of The Red and the Black in his rucksack through out his years in the Japanese army.   When I  found out that Stendhal was one of the ten percent who survived the French Army's  march back to France from Moscow                                                          bn with the  Napoleon's troops I knew he was at the very least a man of very strong character.

Clifton Fadiman in The Life Time Reading Plan says The Red and the Black is one of  the first novels centering around a young man from the provinces coming to the big city (Paris) to make his fortune.   In France in the early years of the century a bright young man with no family status or wealth had few options to make his fortune.     There was the red of the uniform of Napoleon's army and the black for the cassock of the clergy.     

The central character of The Red and  the Black, Julian Sorel is a bookish young man born into a working class family.   Julian has no interest in spending his life in hard labor in the saw mills like his father.     Through a lucky set of contacts Julian in time obtains a good clerical position in the church and with the recommendation of a cardinal he becomes the bookkeeper for a wealthy   merchant with a much younger love starved wife.    From there Julian goes on to have a series of adventures and encounters which I do not want to spoil for future readers.    

I found  The Red and the Black not at all a stale stuffy old book.   It has a lot of very acute psychological observations.   It is a great adventure story because we know and care about Julian even though we know he is no epic hero!.    It is a funny satire of the French society in the early 19th century that is pretty much a universally applicable story.    Historically the influence of this book is huge.     I think maybe one of the reasons Michio Takeyama took this book to war with him is he wanted to be able when he could to retreat into a wonderful work of art by a man who also withstood the horrors of war.  

The Red and the Black is not a hard book to follow.    There are only a few central characters.    It is actually quite funny in parts.    I think I would  advise readers new to Stendhal to first read The Red and The Black and then The Charterhouse of Parma.       


Roger Gard in his introduction to the book gives us some good historical background.   I really respected him when  after completing his biographical and historical data section he tells the first time reader to skip the rest of his introduction as  you really do not need a set of instructions to read this book.   He says if you want to you can come back and read the rest of his introduction after you are finished with the book but he really sees little need to do so!.   There is an honest man.


Mel u

The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal

The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal, 1839, trans. by John Sturrock, 510 pages)

Stendhal (pen name of Marie-Henri Beyle-1783 to 1842) is the author of two great 19th century French novels.    Normally his first novel, The Red and The Black (1830) is the one of his books listed among the world's 100 best novels.   Stendahl lived a very interesting life.   When I discovered that he had gone to Moscow with the army of Napoleon in 1812 and made it back when 90 percent of those who made the trip did not I knew he was a person of great strength of character.   After returning from Moscow he basically moved to Italy and became fascinated with Italian culture (and became involved with many Italian women).     The Charterhouse of Parma was written via dictation in 53 days. (A charterhouse is a Chartrusian monastary.   Parma is a city in Northern Italy on the Mediterranean Sea)

The Charterhouse of Parma is the story of the life of Fabrice del Dongo, from his birth in 1798 to his death.    The real action of the novel opens with Napoleon's invasion of Italy.   In a series of comic misadventures Fabrice enters France determined to join the army of Napoleon.    He ends up witnessing Napoleon's historic defeat at Waterloo.   I thought the battle scenes in this section of the book were totally gripping in that Stendahl seems to succeed in conveying the  horrors of war  as seen by the participants in the battle who see only the tiny bit of land in front of them.    After the war is over Fabrice returns to Italy and a lot of his time is taken up in the social circle of his aunt, who may or may not be a Duchess.   The aunt and the prime minister of Parma meet and fall in love.   The prime minister then has the aunt marry a very rich old man who he plans to send out of the country for many years as an ambassador.   This leaves the prime minister and the aunt free to carry on their affair.   The plot has many soap opera like turns.   In one very well done section Stendahl's depiction of a period where Fabrice was in prison is so well done I almost longed for it to be over.     Stendhal goes into great detail about the lives of people in the court of Parma.   There is no romanticising of the nobility in the world of Stendahl.   Stendahl has a very acute sense for the moral dimensions of his characters.    Nothing  seems lost on  him.   Machiavelli would feel right at home in the world depicted by Stendahl.


The question might be,  to be blunt,  "why is Stendahl considered a great novelist?".    I think it is for his very realistic portayal of human nature, for his ability to make things come alive for  the reader (some say his battle scenes are the best anywhere), for his ability to keep us interested at all times in Fabrice who is far from a purely noble character.   Historically his importance is immense.   I am currently reading Ford Madox Ford's history of literature, The March of Literature.   Ford says Fabrice is one of the best and  most minutely realized characters in all 19th century literature. Ford also suggests that  Balzac and Stendahl created the realistic novel.    Ford also said  the lead characters in The Charterhouse of  of Stendhal are "the most fantastic to be found in any book of adventure ever written, and they are rendered almost maddening by the light of sinister reality that plays on all his scenes".


One of the reasons I was drawn to read Stendahl at this point in my life is that Stendahl seems to be the most admired writer among the best of the Japanese novelists of the 20th century.   The author of the Burmese Harp, Michio Takeyama translated his work into Japanese and carried The Red and the Black in his rucksack while serving in the Japanese Imperial Army in the Philippines.   Most of the best of the Japanese novelists seemed to have studied at one point in their academic years 19th century French novels and Stendahl was consistently the most admired.   I think it is because of his ability to place real people in real settings and show them buffeted  about by the forces of history as well as his great empathy for his characters and his psychological acuteness  as well the feeling of great cultural depth that drew the pre-WWII  Japanese novelist to Stendahl.   


The Charterhouse of Parma is also a very funny book.   It is a great satire on the vanity of man and the folly of putting too much faith in nobility, whoever they may be.  It shows great empathy for its female characters.     If you like to read classic 19th century  novels, The Charterhouse of Parma should for sure be on your one of these days list.    I am glad I took the time to read it.   It helped me understand a little more the development of the 19th century novel.   I also am starting to think that the modern Japanese novel got the germ of its start when a group of young men from elite schools in Tokyo in the 1890s to 1910  began to be able to read 19th century French literature and married this to classical Japanese forms and devices.   This is just a theory and maybe scholars would say it  is off the wall idea that makes no sense.    I enjoyed this book and with a bit of patience others in love with the 19th century novel will also, I think.   It is a serious book to be respected.


Mel u