The crisis in Stendhal's posthumous history is Sainte-Beuve's Causeries des Lundis of January 2nd and 9th, 1854, of which Stendhal was the subject. Stendhal died in 1842. It is sometimes said that his reputation is a fictitious reputation, intentionally worked up by partisanship and without regard to merit, that in his lifetime he was poorly thought of. This is untrue. His artistic activities, like his military, were appreciated by those competent to judge them. He was complimented by Napoleon on his services prior to the retreat from Moscow; Balzac, who of all men was capable of judging a novel and, still more, a direct analysis of a passion, was one of his admirers, and particularly an admirer of De l'Amour. From the general public he met to a great extent with mistrust, and for a few years after his death his memory was honoured with apathetic silence. The few, a chosen public and some faithful friends—Mérimée and others—still cherished his reputation. In 1853, owing in great measure to the efforts of Romain Colomb and Louis Crozet, a complete edition of his works was published by Michel-Lévy. And then, very appropriately, early in the next year was heard the impressive judgment of Sainte-Beuve. Perhaps the justest remark in that just appreciation is where he gives Stendhal the merit of being one of the first Frenchmen to travel littérairement parlant.[19] Stendhal came back from each of his many and frequent voyages, like the happy traveller in Joachim du Bellay's sonnet, plein d'usage et raison—knowing the ways of men and full of ripe wisdom. And this is true not only of his travels over land and sea, but also of those into the thoughtful world of books.
An equally true—perhaps still truer—note was struck by Sainte-Beuve, when he insisted on the important place in Stendhal's character played by la peur d'être dupe—the fear of being duped. Stendhal was always and in all situations beset by this fear; it tainted his happiest moments and his best qualities. We have already remarked on the effect on his style of his mistrust of himself—it is the same characteristic. A sentimental romantic by nature, he was always on his guard against the follies of a sentimental outlook; a sceptic by education and the effect of his age, he was afraid of being the dupe of his doubts; he was sceptical of scepticism itself. This tended to make him unreal and affected, made him often defeat his own ends in the oddest way. In order to avoid the possibility of being carried away too far along a course, in which instinct led him, he would choose a direction approved instead by his intellect, only to find out too late that he was cutting therein a sorry figure. Remember, as a boy he made his entrance into the world "with the fixed intention of being a seducer of women," and that, late in life, he made the melancholy confession that his normal role was that of the lover crossed in love. Here lies the commentary on not a little in Stendhal's life and works.
The facts of his life can be told very briefly.
Henry Beyle, who wrote under the name of Stendhal, was born at Grenoble in 1783, and was educated in his native town. In 1799 he came to Paris and was placed there under the protection of Daru, an important officer under Napoleon, a relative and patron of his family. But he showed no fitness for the various kinds of office work to which he was put. He tried his hand at this time, unsuccessfully also, at painting.
In 1800, still under the protection of Daru, he went to Italy, and, having obtained a commission in the 6th regiment of Dragoons, had his first experience of active service. By 1802 he had distinguished himself as a soldier, and it was to the general surprise of all who knew him, that he returned to France on leave, handed in his papers and returned to Grenoble.
He soon returned to Paris, there to begin serious study. But in 1806, he was once more with Daru and the army—present at the triumphal entry of Napoleon into Berlin. It was directly after this that he was sent to Brunswick as assistant commissaire des guerres.
He left Brunswick in 1809, but after a flying visit to Paris, he was again given official employment in Germany. He was with the army at Vienna. After the peace of Schoenbrunn he returned once more to Paris in 1810.
In 1812, he saw service once more—taking an active and distinguished part in the Russian campaign of that year. He was complimented by Napoleon on the way he had discharged his duties in the commissariat. He witnessed the burning of Moscow and shared in the horrors and hardships of the retreat.
In 1813 his duties brought him to Segan in Silesia, and in 1814 to his native town of Grenoble.
The fall of Napoleon in the same year deprived him of his position and prospects. He went to Milan and stayed there with little interruption till 1821; only leaving after these, the happiest, years of his life, through fear of being implicated in the Carbonari troubles.
In 1830, he was appointed to the consulate of Trieste; but Metternich, who, no doubt, mistrusted his liberal tendencies, refused to ratify his appointment, and he was transferred to Civita Vecchia. This unhealthy district tried his health, and frequent travel did not succeed in repairing it.
In 1841, he was on leave in Paris, where he died suddenly in the following year.
Stendhal's best-known books are his two novels: La Chartreuse de Parme and Le Rouge et le Noir. Besides these there are his works of travel—Promenades dans Rome and Rome, Florence et Naples; Mémoire d'un Touriste; his history of Italian painting; his lives of Haydn, Mozart and Rossini; L'Abbesse de Castro and other minor works of fiction; finally a number of autobiographical works, of which La Vie de Henri Brulard, begun in his fiftieth year and left incomplete, is the most important.
But De l'Amour, Stendhal himself considered his most important work; it was written, as he tells us, in his happy years in Lombardy. It was published on his return to Paris in 1822, but it had no success, and copies of this edition are very rare. Recently it has been reprinted by Messrs. J. M. Dent and Sons (in Chef d'Œuvres de la Littérature Française, London and Paris, 1912). The second edition (1833) had no more success than the first and is equally difficult to find. Stendhal was preparing a third edition for the press when he died in 1842. In 1853 the work made a new appearance in the edition of Stendhal's works published by Michel-Lévy, since reprinted by Calmann-Lévy. It contains certain additions, some of which Stendhal probably intended for the new edition, which he was planning at the time of his death.
Within the last year have appeared the first volumes of a new French edition of Stendhal's works, published by Messrs. Honoré and Edouard Champion of Paris. It will be the most complete edition of Stendhal's works yet published and is the surest evidence that Stendhal's position in French literature is now assured. The volume containing De l'Amour has not yet appeared.
The basis of this translation is the first edition, to which we have only added three prefaces, written by Stendhal at various, subsequent dates and all well worth perusal. Apart from these, we have preferred to leave the book just as it appeared in the two editions, which were published in Stendhal's own lifetime.
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