With the habitual cleverness of his tongue exacerbated by the misfortune of his love affair, Stendhal became a distinguished but unpopular figure with the Parisians. Most in his element "in a salon of eight or ten persons where all the women have had lovers, where the conversation is gay and flavoured with anecdote, and when light punch is served at half-past twelve," he was merciless to the philistine and the bore, would rally with tactless truth a highly respectable lady on her liaison with the Archbishop of Paris, and would snub unwelcome declarations with artistic repartee.
Plunging vigorously into the controversy between the Classicism and the Romanticists, Stendhal published in 1825 his celebrated pamphlet Racine and Shakespeare, which denounced the Alexandrine as a cache-sottise and vindicated the live modernity of a present age against the dead orthodoxy of a past generation. This little work, rushed off in a few hours, is one of Stendhal's happiest efforts. The style is bright with a lucid enthusiasm and sharp with a malicious logic. How crisp for instance is the truth of the following:
"Le Viellard—'Continuons.'"
"Le jeune Homme—'Examinons.'"
"Voilà tout le dix-neuvieme siècle."
Shakespeare and Racine was followed by the Life of Rossini, whom Stendhal had known personally at Milan, and by Armance (1827), the first of that series of novels on which the literary fame of Stendhal substantially rests. This work possesses all the essential Stendhalian qualities; the vein of Byronism, the contempt for the bourgeois, the lucid style, and above all the detailed description of what takes place in the interior of the mind. The plot consists of the sentimental complications resultant on the consciousness of the hero, who is one of those souls made to feel with energy, of his natural disqualification for efficient marriage. Yet with a subtlety which is Jamesian in everything but the clearness of the style, the actual difficulty is never explicitly mentioned, though every nuance of sensitiveness is delicately delineated. And with what delicate simplicity does Stendhal narrate the suicide of Octave, who has simply married his adored cousin in order to leave her the prestige of a rich and honourable widowhood. Shortly after the marriage Octave has left his wife and set sail for Greece.
"Never had Octave been so under the spell of the most tender love as in this supreme moment. He granted to himself the luxury of telling everything to Armance except the nature of his death. A cabin boy from the top of the mast cried out 'land.' It was the soil of Greece and the mountains of the Morea which were to be perceived on the horizon. A fresh wind carried on the vessel rapidly. The name of Greece reawakened the courage of Octave. I salute you, he said to himself, oh land of heroes. And at midnight on the third of March, as the moon was rising behind Mount Kalos, a self-prepared mixture of opium and digitalis softly delivered Octave from that life of his which had been so agitated. He was found at dawn motionless on the bridge, resting on some cordage. A smile was on his lips, and his rare beauty struck even the sailors charged with his burial."
Stendhal's next work was the well-known Promenades en Rome, an admirable book entirely free from the taint of the conscientious sightseer, but replete with the original observations of an acute cosmopolitan who never shrinks from following his fancy along some amiable digression. It was however in Le Rouge et le Noir, 1830, that Stendhal gave to the world his real masterpiece. This work, which has become since the end of the last century the revered object of the cult of the Rougistes, among whom it is a point of honour to know the whole book by heart, and which occupies an equal rank with that of the Comédie Humaine or Madame Bovary, is remarkable both by reason of the intrinsic character of the hero and the psychological technique with which the story is told.
The hero, like Stendhal himself, possesses a subjective and sensitive mind, rendered tough and virile by the savage energy of the Revolution. In fact some previous knowledge both of Stendhal's life and Stendhal's character are requisite for the full appreciation of a book which, in spite of the fact that the hero is not only a seducer but also an attempted murderer, has yet some claim to be regarded as the dignified confession of a robust faith.
Julien Sorel is the son of a carpenter in a small provincial town. Proved guilty from his infancy of the unpardonable crime of being different from the average child, he is harshly treated by his father. The Napoleonic legend inflames his imagination, but he lives in the time of the Restoration, when it is the Church and not the Army which opens a career to the ambitious parvenu. By a stroke of fortune Julien obtains when nineteen the post of tutor to the children of the local mayor, M. de Rênal. Feeling acutely the degradation of his menial position, he violently rebels against his own sensitiveness, as he deliberately forges the natural softness of his heart into the most brutal iron. Formulating the ideals of pride and success, he determines to live up to them at whatever cost either to himself or others. When consequently the charming though ordinary Mme. de Rênal begins to manifest towards him a somewhat personal interest, he sets himself to force the pace, as a matter neither of sensuality nor even of politeness, but of sheer self-respect. What for instance are Julien's feelings during the first assignation?