Stendhal

The Lives of Haydn, Mozart and Metastasio – Stendhal’s first published work – owes its inspiration to the audacious pragmatism of its author. After the collapse of the Napoleonic empire, Henri Beyle was jobless, soon destined to become a refugee and in desperate need of money. His most abiding passion in life was music, so why not write about it? Unfortunately, however, he knew next to nothing about it. So, calmly and without the slightest pang of conscience, he resolved to plunder the works of other writers – in particular those of the musicologist Giuseppe Carpani, who was annoyed and said so vociferously.The result of Stendhal’s unscrupulous plagiarism is one of the most fascinating literary enigmas of all time. How is it that what started as a blatant act of piracy evolved into a work of enduring value? Despite its unpropitious beginnings, this work represents the wrong-headedness of a genius – and the singular Louis-Alexandre-César Bombet who signed the Lives was already, in everything that mattered, the man who was to be Stendhal, one of the most prominent literary figures of the nineteenth century.

Few writers have known Italy better than Stendhal: he was only seventeen when he first rode south across the Alps in the wake of Napoleon’s armies, and he continued to travel and to live in Italy until a few months before his death. Some of his visits lasted only a few weeks, others continued for years, and he spent the last decade of his life as French Consul in Civitavecchia – yet he was never a tourist in the ordinary sense of the word. Italy, for Stendhal, was never a mere treasure trove of ruins, museums and galleries: it was the life of the country which fascinated him, its spirit, the inner workings of its heart and mind. This picture – or rather this living dream – of Italy he created is as fresh and tantalizing today as it was almost two centuries ago.

The articles which Stendhal contributed as French correspondent for the ‘London Magazine’, ‘New Monthly Magazine’ and other English Marketing Reviews of the 1820s are here brought together in a single volume, the only edition available in English. In them Stendhal – defying fashion and giving proof of the bold originality of his creative writing – provides an illuminating and often entertaining commentary on the politics and mores of post-Napoleonic France and Italy, and reveals his outstanding and all too rarely acknowledged gifts as a reviewer and literary critic. Together with the articles from the English Marketing Reviews, this edition includes translations of articles, essays and notes on Cornielle, Scott and Lord Byron, who was on terms of close acquaintance with Stendhal during his stay in Milan in 1816.

This major critical work by the great French novelist reveals Stendhal’s decisive role in the literary renaissance called Romanticism. Written sixteen years before ‘The Charterhouse of Parma’, it marked the beginning of his illustrious career and established him at the forefront of the French Romantic movement. The first part of ‘Racine and Shakespeare’ appeared as a pamphlet in 1823, when Waterloo was still bitterly alive in the French mind. In it, Stendhal vigorously championed the spontaneous vitality of Shakespeare while condemning the rigid imitators of Corneille and Racine. The second half of ‘Racine and Shakespeare’ appeared two years later in answer to a speech against Romanticism by the secretary of the Academie Francaise. It is a brilliant tour de force, an exchange of letters between an old classicist and a young Romanticiist, in which Stendhal defined Romanticism not only for his age but for all time.

Stendhal: Rot und Schwarz. Le Rouge et le Noir Lesefreundlicher Gro druck in 16-pt-Schrift Gro format, 210 x 297 mm Berliner Ausgabe, 2019 Durchgesehener Neusatz mit einer Biographie des Autors bearbeitet und eingerichtet von Theodor Borken Entstanden 1828-1830. Erstdruck: Paris 1830. Hier in der bers. v. Arthur Schurig (1870-1929). Originaltitel: Le rouge et le noir. Textgrundlage ist die Ausgabe: Stendhal: Rot und Schwarz. Zeitbild von 1830, bers. v. Arthur Schurig, Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1947. Umschlaggestaltung von Thomas Schultz-Overhage unter Verwendung des Bildes: Jean-L on G r me, Die Verschw rer im Salon, 1892. Gesetzt aus der Minion Pro, 16 pt. Henricus Edition Deutsche Klassik UG (haftungsbeschr nkt)

Stendhal: Rot und Schwarz. Le Rouge et le Noir Lesefreundlicher Gro druck in 16-pt-Schrift Gro format, 210 x 297 mm Berliner Ausgabe, 2019 Durchgesehener Neusatz mit einer Biographie des Autors bearbeitet und eingerichtet von Theodor Borken Entstanden 1828-1830. Erstdruck: Paris 1830. Hier in der bers. v. Arthur Schurig (1870-1929). Originaltitel: Le rouge et le noir. Textgrundlage ist die Ausgabe: Stendhal: Rot und Schwarz. Zeitbild von 1830, bers. v. Arthur Schurig, Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1947. Umschlaggestaltung von Thomas Schultz-Overhage unter Verwendung des Bildes: Jean-L on G r me, Die Verschw rer im Salon, 1892. Gesetzt aus der Minion Pro, 16 pt. Henricus Edition Deutsche Klassik UG (haftungsbeschr nkt)

Au rouge des armes, Julien Sorel pr f rera le noir des ordres. Au cours de son ascension sociale, deux femmes se singularisent, comme pour figurer les deux penchants de son caract re: Madame de R nal - le r ve, l'aspiration un bonheur pur et simple - et Mathilde de La Mole - l' nergie, l'action brillante et f brile. A ces composantes stendhaliennes (conception de la vie qui d passe la strat gie narrative pour s' tendre l'existence de l'auteur) correspondent deux facettes stylistiques: la sobri t et la restriction du champ de vision.