My recent readings of Sartre and de Beauvoir provided the impetus to approach Stendhal, a writer both considered among their favourites. I am currently immersed in The Charterhouse of Parma: its pace is exhilarating, its characters vivid. Yet I can understand Nabokov’s remark that Stendhal never wrote a great sentence. He can tell a story, but at least in my translation, he is not a stylist.
Reading around Stendhal, I am drawn to the idea of him as a prototypical Sartrean figure: one preoccupied with the problem of the self. His personal philosophy circled four imperatives: to know oneself, to be oneself, to shape oneself, and, finally, to hide oneself. Stendhal’s goal was to become natural, though the meaning of that remains elusive. After failing to live up fully to his own maxims, he turned increasingly to fiction, seeking through his characters what life had denied.
In keeping with his fourth maxim, Stendhal concealed himself behind more than a hundred pseudonyms. His autobiographical writings: Memoirs of an Egotist, Private Diaries, and The Life of Henry Brulard remain fascinating documents of a restless, divided pursuit of authenticity.
>Beauvoir is making me curious about Stendhal too. I own a Norton copy of Red and Black in English which I suppose I should check out before rushing out and buying his work in French."Becoming natural" is indeed a vague and probably elusive goal.
>I haven't read enough about Stendhal's attempt to conquer self, but in some ways he was trying to live like an existentialist, and would have been delighted with Sartre's ideas of authenticity and bad faith.
>Lovely maxims. Does Stendhal think each is iterating the same truth, or is each saying the same thing in a slightly different way?
>Kevin: Each underpinned the constant theme of 'Be Natural,' but in slightly different ways. Being natural entails not giving the impression of trying to make an impression.The 'hide yourself' maxim is particularly interesting, and yields multiple interpretations, foremost being Stendhal's belief that the vast majority of people are self-obsessed and pompous. What he tried to hide was his belief that people are such that he must hide this knowledge from them.
>I've only read The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma, and now realise that this is effectively nothing vis-à-vis the fascinating take on self that you point to in his maxims: must seek out those last 3 books referred to in your post.
>Jen, I came to the same conclusion. These are grand stories, but I suspect not the writing that Beauvoir and Sartre found so illuminating.
>My comment above, Jen, could not be further from the truth. I've been reading my The Second Sex, and there was much that Beauvoir found inspiring in his fiction, notably his treatment of women characters.