"1828, Paris. The next morning, his friends came, and his mood suddenly came alive. A man was walking around the room and saw a blank ledger on the table with a title written on it: "Jullien." He asked curiously, what does this mean? Oh, Stendhal replied, he wanted to write a long novel. The friends were excited and encouraged the overly sad man to pick up his spirits. So he really began to write this work. The title was erased and replaced with a title that would later become an immortal work, The Red and the Black. In fact, from that day on, he had come to an end as Henry Bell, and another name began to appear and pass through the ages: Stendhal. ”
Portrait of Stendhal
This is a description by the Austrian novelist and biographer Stephen Zweig in his biography of a famous person, "The Biography of the Three Writers". In 1830, Stendhal's novel was published, the first edition of which was titled Jullien, subtitled "Chronicles of the Nineteenth Century". In later editions, the title of the novel was changed to "The Red and the Black" and the subtitle was changed to "The Chronicles of the Ages of 1830". Later, The Red and the Black became an immortal classic of French and even world literature, and the Red and the Black was almost synonymous with Stendhal (although his other novel, Abbey de Parma (1839), may have been even better). Since the 1950s, "The Red and the Black" has gradually become a household name in China, and the study of "The Red and the Black" was once called "red science". Countless Chinese through novels and films (in 1959, the Italian film "The Red and the Black", translated by the Shanghai Film Studio, was released in Chinese mainland, which had a great impact on the whole society. I knew the young Yu Lian who "had a pair of eyes that were sometimes exploring, sometimes contemplative, and sometimes as beautiful as a flame." But many people don't know that Julien Soher, one of the most famous figures in literary history, is actually Stendhal in a mask.
Ideals and reality
According to the famous novelist Somerset Maugham, Stendhal had two goals in his early years: one was to become a brilliant theatrical poet, for which he read a lot of plays and went to the theater almost every day, but unfortunately he lacked the talent to conceive plots (as we see in his novels) and was doomed to become a poet; second, to become a great lover. Helplessly, in this regard, God did not give him the corresponding conditions. He was short and fat, his appearance was not good, his legs were short and thick, his nose was fat and prominent, only a pair of brown eyes were shining, his hands and feet were slender and abnormal, and his skin was as delicate as a woman's. Such an image obviously lacks masculine charm, so he dresses himself quite fashionably, and often carries a sword, showing a majestic appearance. In fact, he was a very shy person.
It is not difficult to understand why Stendhal's love history, although it is rich, has basically ended in failure. In a (tragic) sense, his life consisted of a series of events that kept falling in love and losing it. Unfortunately, he himself attaches great importance to love, as he confessed: "Love has always been of the utmost importance to me, and can even be said to be my only major event." However, due to his inexhaustible image and shy and hesitant personality, Stendhal is far less handy in love than Balzac, nor is it as brilliant as Hugo's continuous victories, and it is even more difficult to read the spring of the world like Dumas and Maupassant... Most of what he left to the world were embarrassing and even laughable "deeds". Once, he pursued Mrs. Daru bitterly, but he did not know whether the other party loved him or not, and even suspected that she laughed at his twisted attitude behind his back, and felt humiliated by this. So he got an old friend to discuss a good plan. Matthew Josephson's Biography of Stendhal leaves us with this precious record of the two-person Q&A:
"Is there any advantage in seducing Mrs. B (who they call Mrs. B Mrs. Daru)?"
The benefits are as follows: the seducer's desires will be vented; he will be able to derive social benefits from them; he will further engage in the study of human emotions; he will satisfy his own sense of self-esteem and honor. ”
To this end, Stendhal also added a note to the Q&A record:
"The best advice is: attack! offensive! offensive! ”
However, when he finally overcomes that damn shyness and hesitation to express his love to Mrs. B, the other party coldly responds that her feelings for him are limited to friendship. In this way, the Battle of Bersheville in Stendhal failed. After repeated setbacks in love, Stendhal put all the moods of activity, sadness, frivolity, and calmness into the writing of On Love (1822). Paradoxically, the best work on the psychology of love of the 19th century comes from a marginalized person who has failed in love (Stendhal from the provinces has long been a marginal person, so that his novels also pay special attention to the marginalized group). Perhaps, this is a fulfillment of an old Chinese saying: a long illness becomes a good doctor. For Stendhal, True Truth is a master of long-term failure.
"On Love"
According to Stendhal's analysis, love can be classified into four types: passionate love, erotic love, carnal love, and vain love. The process of love has seven steps: love, the beginning of hope, expectation, the beginning of love, the first crystallization, doubt or jealousy, and the second crystallization. In this work, Stendhal geniusly proposes the phenomenon of the "crystallization" of love. In this regard, he gave the following definition with the subtle brushstrokes of the cave candle:
"At the Salt Mine in Salzburg, a branch that had fallen leaves in the winter was thrown deep in the abandoned mine, and when it was taken out two or three months later, the branch was already covered with crystalline crystals: the thinnest branch, no thicker than the claws of a tit, was covered with countless shining, brilliant diamonds, and the true face of the branch could no longer be recognized."
Despite the myriad reasons to be ridiculed, Stendhal responded admirably with a strong and delicate heart. In this thin pamphlet, we can read many familiar golden sentences: "Love is like a high fever, and its birth and disappearance are never subject to man's own will." "Without loneliness, where is love?" "The kingdom of love is full of tragedies." "Love grows because of genuine jealousy." ...... Unlike many people who are abused by love to the skin, he is not disappointed and despised by love, but believes that "love is a beautiful emotion that stimulates people's strength, with the strongest passion, with the purity of righteousness." It even wrote: "Love is the miracle of civilization." ”
Like many classics ignored by its contemporaries, this masterpiece of the psychology of love published in 1822 (by this time Stendhal was 39 years old) sold only 17 copies in the following 11 years. In every way, Stendhal seems to be a proper loser. However, Stendhal, who seems to have been doing nothing for half a lifetime, has actually accumulated all his experience, imagination, talent and experience, and the image of the young Jullien Sochel is rolling and surging in Stendhal's mind, and the immortal classic of literary history, "The Red and the Black", is about to come out.
The Red and the Black
In 1827, the French Gazette of justice published a powerful social news: a seminary student named Antoine Baird worked as a tutor in the home of Monsieur Michaeu and monsieur de Gordon. He seduced the former's wife and the latter's daughter and was immediately fired. Later, he returned to his studies and prepared to become a priest, but because of his reputation, no seminary would accept him. Believing that the Mihue and his wife were responsible, he shot Mrs. Mihue to avenge her while she was in church, and then raised a gun to commit suicide. His injuries were not enough to kill him, and he was arrested and tried and sentenced to death. Shocked by the news event, Stendhal saw Baird's actions as a "beautiful crime", a powerful rebellious character rebelling against the social order. Stendhal then used this as inspiration to write his first novel, The Red and the Black, which was published three years later at the age of 47. Later history tells us that it is a miracle that a public official who was unknown before his death and who started very late in literary creation, with two or three novels, or more precisely, mainly with "The Red and the Black", achieved a position almost on par with Balzac in the history of literature.
Stendhal's male protagonist, Julien Soher, was born into a family of carpenters in the small provincial town of Villeyer, loved to read books from an early age, and had an amazing memory, a specialty that led him to be invited by the mayor to work as a tutor. Later, out of self-esteem, Jullien rejected the maid who had just received a fortune and was determined to conquer the mayor's wife. Under his bold pursuits, including holding hands and climbing into the window, Madame de Reiner also fell in love with him. However, this incident gradually led to gossip, and Madame de Reiner attributed the child's illness to God's punishment for herself, and gradually alienated from Lian. Finally, Yu Lian left for further study at Besonson Seminary. However, the seminary was full of intrigues, favoring his dean to introduce him to the house of the Marquis de La Mouir of Paris as a secretary. Realizing that martel, the marquis's daughter, Martel can "bring a good position in society to her husband", Jullien pursues her with all his heart, just as Martel also fantasizes about romantic and adventurous love, and eventually becomes pregnant without marriage, and the two are ready to enter into marriage. It was at this time that Madame de Reiner, forced by the priest, wrote a letter of indictment, which directly ruined Jullien's future. In anger, Jullien shot and seriously injured Madame de Reiner and was sentenced to death. In a life-and-death situation, Jullien refused all rescues and forstood each other with Madame de Reiner, who died of heartbreak even after his death.
In this final climax, Jullien was reluctant to bow to anyone at the public trial because "I was by no means judged by people of my class, and I did not see a rich peasant in the jurors' seat, but only some infuriating bourgeoisie." This passage was so loud that the Chinese audience who watched the same section of the movie "The Red and the Black" was moved (Yu Lian, played by popular star Philippe, dumped countless Chinese). The attention paid to small people, especially those on the fringes of society, is a major feature of Stendhal's novels. He was more concerned about the "no way out" of the city than the prince and nobleman. For them, Stendhal gave a sympathetic look and a reflection on reality. Whether it is the faltering French society of the post-Napoleonic era or the noisy and empty modern dynasty, the young Julliens in this world seem to be in a steady stream, they fight for themselves, fight for humiliation, and eventually become duckweeds, dying in a dream.
Behind this huge illusion lies an important social theme of the 19th century: how an ordinary person can climb to high society after class solidification has been replaced by the flow of capital. Keenly aware of the intrinsic connection between love and ambition, Stendhal, inspired by Napoleon's example, blended romantic passion, ego and resistance, trying to change his destiny with passion, ability and courage to climb upwards, in Stendhal's words: "Great enthusiasm can overcome everything... As long as a person pursues it intensely and persistently, he can achieve his goal. "When pure love remains in the poet's dreams, Stendhal, which combines romanticism and realism, depicts the complexity of male and female love, and when love is indistinguishably intertwined with the social purpose of climbing upwards, the connotation of love is quietly undergoing historical changes, and in addition to the continuing function of the species that married and had children in the past, the ideal function of perfecting the soul, and the strengthening of family power function of marriage, the important function of improving the social status of the individual was added.
Poster for the French film The Red and the Black (1997).
When we read The Red and the Black again, we find a surprising fact: no one is more interested in himself than Stendhal, who will always be the male protagonist of the novel. However, Jullien is a masked Stendhal. In other words, Jullien was the man Stendhal had always wanted to be, but was destined not to be. To this end, he portrayed Jullien as a very masculine charismatic image, always able to get the loyal love of women. He himself hoped for this at all costs, but he never achieved it. He asked Jullien to use the methods he had come up with but repeatedly failed to achieve his goal of pursuing women, and the reason for this irony was only Yulian's charming image and talkative talent, which were the two major weaknesses of Stendhal. Beyond that, he almost instilled himself on Jullien—giving himself good memory, his own courage, his own shyness, his own inferiority, his own ambition, his sensitive, calculating brain, his own lack of virtue and ingratitude.
prophet
I think that the most valuable thing about Stendhal is that even if he is constantly beaten and even humiliated by life, he still maintains a strong enthusiasm for life, an indomitable will to life and accurate judgment. Stendhal is almost unmatched in terms of predictability for the future. Even at the lowest point in his life, he confidently said, "I will be understood in 1880 (50 years after the publication of the novel The Red and the Black." Later, he gave two divine prophecies: "All I value is that it was reprinted in 1900." "What I'm thinking about is another lottery, where the biggest bet is: Be a writer who was read for people in 1935." To this day, there is a widespread consensus around the world that Stendhal, together with Balzac and Flaubert, constitutes the trinity of France's most important novelists.
In this Trinity, Balzac's vast depiction of the panorama of French society and his ability to portray the characters, Flaubert discovered the soil of unknown daily life and made an anatomically accurate depictions, only Stendhal pushed the psychological depiction to the peak of that era along the path of penetrating deep into the hearts of the characters. We can say that Stendhal was an observer of the human mind, and the famous French literary theorist Danner bluntly said that Stendhal was the greatest psychological writer of this era and any era. In this sense, we can say that Stendh reached the foreword of Proust, the ultimate pinnacle of French literature. The most attractive part of "The Red and the Black" lies in the inner fluctuations of the young Yulian in his efforts to climb to high society- Jullien's self-esteem and inferiority, ambition and ambition, conscience and cheekiness, courage and shyness... The various changes between his inner self-preservation and concessions to society are written in great detail, and all of these changes are based on love stories.
For example, one of the most famous fragments is when Jullien first pursues Madame de Reiner:
Everyone was finally seated, Madame de Reiner sitting next to Jullien, and Madame Delvi next to her friend. Yu Lian was so preoccupied with what he was going to do that he couldn't find anything to say. The conversation was listless and lifeless.
Yu Lian thought to himself, "Am I going to tremble and pity like the first duel?" "He couldn't see his mental state clearly, and he had too much suspicion about himself and about others.
This kind of anxiety is really terrible, and it is better to feel no matter what danger you encounter. ...... The castle's bell had already struck nine o'clock, and he still didn't dare to make a move. Jullien, angered by his cowardice, thought to himself, "When the bell rings at ten o'clock, I will do what I want to do all day at night, or I will go back to my room and shoot myself in the head." ”
Jullien was so excited that he could hardly help himself. Finally the bell above his head struck ten o'clock, and the moment of waiting and anxiety was finally over. The sound of the bell, the damning bell, reverberated in his mind, making his heart pound. Just as the last bell was about to strike, he reached out and grabbed Madame de Reiner's hand, but she immediately jerked it back. Yu Lian did not know how to be good at this time, and held the hand again. Although he had fainted, he couldn't help but be surprised, and the hand he was holding was as cold as ice. He held it vigorously, and his hands trembled in battle. Madame de Reiner made one last attempt to withdraw her hand, but the hand remained.
Jullien's heart was overwhelmed by a torrent of happiness, not by his Lady Ed Reiner, but by a terrible torment that had finally come to an end.
Here, the inner activity of Jullien holding Madame de Reiner's hand for the first time is vividly displayed in Stendhal's pen. This complex emotional fluctuation includes both inferiority and self-esteem in stratification and anxiety and ecstasy in love, two similar emotions intertwined in Stendhal's pen and difficult to distinguish. This led to various debates about "The Red and the Black" in later generations: some people thought it was a romance novel, others thought it was a political novel, and there were even rumors that "if you don't read "The Red and the Black," you can't mix in politics." This is reminiscent of Mr. Lu Xun's famous comment on "Dream of the Red Chamber": "The scribes saw "Yi", the Taoists saw the obscenity, the talents saw the entanglement, the revolutionaries saw the rows full, the gossipers saw the palace secrets..." "The Red and the Black" is not only love, nor only politics, but also contains all aspects of French society in the first half of the 19th century, especially the human struggles of people on the fringes of society. Knowing all this, when we look back at the four benefits of "seducing Mrs. B" mentioned above, we will have an epiphany that it is simply the endorsement of the entire "Red and Black". Jullien's desire to conquer, along with all his self-esteem and inferiority, intertwined with his desire to climb into high society, forms the source of the narrative of the entire novel. And the three years he spent writing The Red and the Black, and the long (not deliberate) preparation that preceded it, was devoted to the in-depth study of human emotions, and Stendhal had few rivals in the field of male and female love.
Stendhal's tombstone
In this way, life, love, and writing are intertwined and intertwined in Stendhal's life. Few people can have such a vast and rich life experience as Stendhal (including his early years with Napoleon's glorious years), and few people can still maintain a great enthusiasm for love in the constantly frustrated love, even as a vital thing in life, and few people can always maintain a passion for creation and self-confidence and prejudgment in the continuously frustrated writing career, and even have such a high literary status with only one or two important works. Behind all of this points to a common reason that in Stendhal, life, love and writing are trinity. In a sense, his life is made up of a series of love events, reflected and sublimated in his novels and essays. Therefore, when we see Stendhal's concise and powerful epitaph, we do not have to feel any surprise and doubt:
Henry Bell, a Native of Milan, has written, loved, and lived.