On Love. Stendhal

regard to our notes at the end of the book. We make no claim that they are exhaustive: we intended only to select some few points for explanation or illustration, with the English reader in view. Here and there in this book are sentences and allusions which we can no more explain than could Stendhal himself, when in 1822 he was correcting the proof-sheets: as he did, we have left them, preferring to believe with him that "the fault lay with the self who was reading, not with the self who had written." But, these few enigmas aside—and they are very few—to make an exhaustive collection of notes on this book would be to write another volume—one of those volumes of "Notes and Appendices," under which scholars bury a Pindar or Catullus. That labour we will gladly leave to others—to be accomplished, we hope, a thousand years hence, when French also is a "dead" language.

      In conclusion we should like to express our thanks to our friend Mr. W. H. Morant, of the India Office, who has helped us to see the translation through the Press.

      P. and C. N. S. W.

[1] See p. 195, below.

[2] See below, Chap. XXXI.

[3] See note at end of Chap. I, p. 21, below; also p. xiv and p. 157, n. 3, below.

[4] Stendhal confesses that he went so far "as to print several passages which he did not understand himself." (See p. 4, below.)

[5] Maxims of Love (Stendhal). (Royal Library, Arthur Humphreys, London, 1906).

[6] Lady Holland told Lord Broughton in 1815, that she remembered "when it used to be said on the invitation cards: 'No foreigners dine with us.'" (Recollections of a Long Life, Vol. I, p. 327).

[7] He does call it, once or twice, a "Physiology of Love," and elsewhere a "livre d'idéologie," but apologises for its singular form at the same time. (See Fourth Preface, p. 11, and Chap. III, p. 27, n. 1).

[8] See p. 63, n. 1, below.

[9] See p. 339, below.

[10] See Translators' note 11, p. 343, below.

[11] See p. 309, below.

[12] The list may be found in Les plus belles pages de Stendhal (Mercure de France, Paris, 1908, pp. 511–14).

[13] On p. 7, below, Stendhal refers to some of the "best" books on Love.

[14] Histoire de la Littérature Française (800–1900), Paris, 1907.

[15] See Translators' note 47, p. 353, below.

[16] See Chap. XLI, p. 159, below.

[17] See Chap. XLI, p. 160, n. 4, below.

[18] "Like the passion of Love that lends Beauties and Graces to the Person it does embrace; and that makes those who are caught with it, with a depraved and corrupt Judgment, consider the thing they love other and more perfect than it is."—Montaigne's Essays, Bk. II, Chapter XVII (Cotton's translation.) This is "crystallisation"—Stendhal could not explain it better.

      We cannot here forgo quoting one more passage from Montaigne, which bears distinctly upon other important views of Stendhal. "I say that Males and Females are cast in the same Mould and that, Education and Usage excepted, the Difference is not great. … It is much more easy to accuse one Sex than to excuse the other. 'Tis according to the Proverb—'Ill may Vice correct Sin.'" (Bk. Ill, Chap. V).

[19] "In a literary sense."

PREFACE[1]

It is in vain that an author solicits the indulgence of his public—the printed page is there to give the lie to his pretended modesty. He would do better to trust to the justice, patience and impartiality of his readers, and it is to this last quality especially that the author of the present work makes his appeal. He has often heard people in France speak of writings, opinions or sentiments as being "truly French"; and so he may well be afraid that, by presenting facts truly as they are, and showing respect only for sentiments and opinions that are universally true, he may have provoked that jealous exclusiveness, which, in spite of its very doubtful character, we have seen of late set up as a virtue. What, I wonder, would become of history, of ethics, of science itself or of literature, if they had to be truly German, truly Russian or Italian, truly Spanish or English, as soon as they had crossed the Rhine, the Alps or the Channel? What are we to say to this kind of justice, to this ambulatory truth? When we see such expressions as "devotion truly Spanish," "virtues truly English," seriously employed in the speeches of patriotic foreigners, it is high time to suspect this sentiment, which expresses itself in very similar terms also elsewhere. At Constantinople or among savages, this blind and exclusive partiality for one's own country is a rabid thirst for blood; among civilised peoples, it is a morbid, unhappy, restless vanity, that is ready to turn on you for a pinprick.[2]

      [1] [To the first edition, 1822.—Tr.]

      [2] Extract from the Preface to M. Simond's Voyage en Suisse, pp. 7, 8.

PREFACE[1]

       Table of Contents

      ThiS work has had no success: it has been found unintelligible—not without reason. Therefore in this new edition the author's primary intention has been to render his ideas with clearness. He has related how they came to him, and he has made a preface and an introduction—all in order