The Red and the Black

Stendhal

Description

Handsome and ambitious, Julien Sorel is determined to rise above his humble peasant origins and make something of his life-by adopting the code of hypocrisy by which his society operates. Julien ultimately commits a crime-out of passion, principle, or insanity-that will bring about his downfall. The Red and the Black is a lively, satirical picture of French Restoration society after Waterloo, riddled with corruption, greed, and ennui. The complex, sympathetic portrayal of Julien, the cold exploiter whose Machiavellian campaign is undercut by his own emotions, makes him Stendhal's most brilliant and human creation-and one of the greatest characters in European literature.

Sujets

• War of the worlds
• Sense and sensibility
• Dostoyevsky
• Kipling
• Dublineses
• León Tolstói
• Leo Tolstoy
• Nesbit
• Biography
• A Tale of Two Cities
• The Complete Works
• Bestseller (disambiguation)
• Toilers of the Sea
• My Ántonia
• The Charterhouse of Parma
• Death Comes for the Archbishop
• Brontë family
• The Three Musketeers
• Christmas carol
• Crime and Punishment
• Wuthering Heights
• The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
• Munro
• Ulysses
• The Screwtape Letters
• The Chronicles of Narnia
• Pride and Prejudice
• Babbitt
• Call of the Wild
• Oliver Twist
• Jane Austen
• Time machine
• Sherlock Holmes
• Bleak House
• Dubliners
• Idiot
• Free
• Détective
• EMMA
• Narnia
• Ulysse (homonymie)
• O. Henry
• Notre-Dame de Paris
• Tom Sawyer
• C. S. Lewis
• Moby Dick
• Wells
• Jane Eyre
• David Copperfield
• Persuasion
• Mark Twain
• Iliad
• Hobbit
• Le Livre de la jungle
• Le Seigneur des anneaux
• Jack London
• H. G. Wells
• J. R. R. Tolkien
• Victor Hugo

Informations

• Publié par: Pandora's Box
• Date de parution: 13 mai 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 4
• EAN13: 9789897784309
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Red and the Black

Table of Contents Introduction Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XIV Chapter XV Chapter XVI Chapter XVII Chapter XVIII Chapter XIX Chapter XX Chapter XXI Chapter XXII Chapter XXIII Chapter XXIV Chapter XXV Chapter XXVI Chapter XXVII Chapter XXVIII Chapter XXIX Chapter XXX Chapter XXXI Chapter XXXII Chapter XXXIII Chapter XXXIV Chapter XXXV Chapter XXXVI Chapter XXXVII Chapter XXXVIII Chapter XXXIX Chapter XL Chapter XLI Chapter XLII Chapter XLIII Chapter XLIV Chapter XLV Chapter XLVI Chapter XLVII Chapter XLVIII Chapter XLIX Chapter L Chapter LI Chapter LII Chapter LIII Chapter LIV Chapter LV Chapter LVI Chapter LVII Chapter LVIII Chapter LIX Chapter LX Chapter LXI Chapter LXII Chapter LXIII Chapter LXIV Chapter LXV Chapter LXVI Chapter LXVII Chapter LXVIII Chapter LXIX Chapter LXX Chapter LXXI Chapter LXXII Chapter LXXIII Chapter LXXIV Chapter LXXV Note
The Red and the Black

A Chronicle of the 19th Century

Stendhal
Translator  : Horace B. Samuel

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Introduction
Some slight sketch of the life and character of Stendhal isparticularly necessary to an understanding of Le Rouge et Le Noir ( The Red and the Black ) not so much as being the formal stuffing ofwhich introductions are made, but because the book as a book standsin the most intimate relation to the author's life and character. Thehero, Julien, is no doubt, viewed superficially, a cad, a scoundrel,an assassin, albeit a person who will alternate the moist eye of thesentimentalist with the ferocious grin of the beast of prey. ButStendhal so far from putting forward any excuses makes a specific pointof wallowing defiantly in his own alleged wickedness. "Even assumingthat Julien is a villain and that it is my portrait," he wrote shortlyafter the publication of the book, "why quarrel with me. In the time ofthe Emperor, Julien would have passed for a very honest man. I lived inthe time of the Emperor. So—but what does it matter?"
Henri Beyle was born in 1783 in Grenoble in Dauphiny, the son of aroyalist lawyer, situated on the borderland between the gentry andthat bourgeoisie which our author was subsequently to chastise withthat malice peculiar to those who spring themselves from the classwhich they despise. The boy's character was a compound of sensibilityand hard rebelliousness, virility and introspection. Orphaned of hismother at the age of seven, hated by his father and unpopular with hisschoolmates, he spent the orthodox unhappy childhood of the artistictemperament. Winning a scholarship at the Ecole Polytechnique atthe age of sixteen he proceeded to Paris, where with characteristicindependence he refused to attend the college classes and set himselfto study privately in his solitary rooms.
In 1800 the influence of his relative M. Daru procured him a commissionin the French Army, and the Marengo campaign gave him an opportunityof practising that Napoleonic worship to which throughout his life heremained consistently faithful, for the operation of the philosophicalmaterialism of the French sceptics on an essentially logical andmathematical mind soon swept away all competing claimants for hisreligious adoration. Almost from his childhood, moreover, he hadabominated the Jesuits, and "Papism is the source of all crimes," wasthroughout his life one of his favourite maxims.
After the army's triumphant entry into Milan, Beyle returned toGrenoble on furlough, whence he dashed off to Paris in pursuit ofa young woman to whom he was paying some attention, resigned hiscommission in the army and set himself to study "with the view ofbecoming a great man." It is in this period that we find the mostmarked development in Beyle's enthusiasm of psychology. This tendencysprang primarily no doubt from his own introspection. For throughouthis life Beyle enjoyed the indisputable and at times dubious luxuryof a double consciousness. He invariably carried inside his braina psychological mirror which reflected every phrase of his emotionwith scientific accuracy. And simultaneously, the critical spirit,half–genie, half–demon inside his brain, would survey in thesemi–detached mood of a keenly interested spectator, the actual emotionitself, applaud or condemn it as the case might be, and ticket theverdict with ample commentations in the psychological register of itsown analysis.
But this trend to psychology, while as we have seen, to some extent,the natural development of mere self–analysis was also tinged with thespirit of self–preservation. With a mind, which in spite of its naturalphysical courage was morbidly susceptible to ridicule and was only toofrequently the dupe of the fear of being duped, Stendhal would scentan enemy in every friend, and as a mere matter of self–protection sethimself to penetrate the secret of every character with which he cameinto contact. One is also justified in taking into account an honestintellectual enthusiasm which found its vent in deciphering the rarerand more precious manuscripts of the "human document."
With the exception of a stay in Marseilles, with his first mistressMélanie Guilhert ("a charming actress who had the most refinedsentiments and to whom I never gave a sou,") and a subsequent sojournin Grenoble, Stendhal remained in Paris till 1806, living so far as waspermitted by the modest allowance of his niggard father the full lifeof the literary temperament. The essence, however, of his character wasthat he was at the same time a man of imagination and a man of action.We consequently find him serving in the Napoleonic campaigns of 1806,1809 and 1812. He was present at the Battle of Jena, came severaltimes into personal contact with Napoleon, discharged with singularefficiency the administration of the State of Brunswick, and retainedhis sangfroid and his bravery during the whole of the panic–strickenretreat of the Moscow campaign.
It is, moreover, to this period that we date Stendhal's liaison withMme. Daru the wife of his aged relative, M. Daru. This particularintrigue has, moreover, a certain psychological importance in thatMme. Daru constituted the model on whom Mathilde de la Mole was drawnin The Red and the Black . The student and historian consequently whois anxious to check how far the novelist is drawing on his experienceand how far on his imagination can compare with profit the descriptionof the Mathilde episode in The Red and the Black with those sectionsin Stendhal's Journal entitled the Life and Sentiments of SilenciousHarry , Memoirs of my Life during my Amour with Countess Palfy ,and also with the posthumous fragment, Le Consultation de Banti , apiece of methodical deliberation on the pressing question. "Dois–je oune dois–je pas avoir la duchesse?" written with all the documentarycoldness of a Government report. It is characteristic that both Bansiand Julien decide in the affirmative as a matter of abstract principle.For they both feel that they must necessarily reproach themselves inafter life if they miss so signal an opportunity.
Disgusted by the Restoration, Stendhal migrated in 1814 to Milan, hisfavourite town in Europe, whose rich and varied life he savoured tothe full from the celebrated ices in the entreates of the opera, tothe reciprocated interest of Mme. Angelina Pietragrua (the Duchessede Sansererina of the Chartreuse of Parma), "a sublime wanton à laLucrezia Borgia" who would appear to have deceived him systematically.It was in Milan that Stendhal first began to write for publication,producing in 1814 The Lives of Haydn and Mozart , and in 1817 a seriesof travel sketches, Rome, Naples, Florence , which was published inLondon.
It was in Milan also than Stendhal first nursed the abstract thrillsof his grand passion for Métilde Countess Dunbowska, whose angelicsweetness would seem to have served at any rate to some extent as aprototype to the character of Mme. de Rênal. In 1821 the novelist wasexpelled from Milan on the apparently unfounded accusation of beinga French spy. It is typical of that mixture of brutal sensuality andrarefied sentimentalism which is one of the most fascinating featuresof Stendhal's character, that even though he had never loved more thanthe lady's heart, he should have remained for three years faithful tothis mistress of his ideal.
In 1822 Stendhal published his treatise, De l'Amour , a practicalscientific treatise on the erotic emotion by an author who possessedthe unusual advantage of being at the same time an acute psychologistand a brilliant man of the world, who could test abstract theories byconcrete practice and could co–ordinate what he had felt in himself andobserve in others into broad general principles.
In 1825 Stendhal plunging vigorously into the controversy between theClassicists and the Romanticists, published his celebrated pamphlet, Racine and Shakespeare , in which he vindicated with successfulcrispness the claims of live verse against stereotyped couplets andof modern analysis against historical tradition. His next work wasthe Life of Rossini , whom he had known personally in Milan, whilein 1827 he published his first novel Armance , which, while notequal to the author's g