Monthly Archives: February 2010

Julien has been copying love letters written by someone else and trying to use them to his purpose.

“It was the contrast between the surface frivolity of his conversation, and the letters’ profound, almost apocalyptic sublimity, that made him stand out.

The length of his sentences, above all, pleased the marshall’s widow:  this was not the hopping and jumping style made fashionable by Voltaire, that terribly immoral man!

Although our hero did everything he could, striving to eliminate any good sense from his conversation, it still struck notes of antimonarchism and impiety, nor did that escape Madame de Fervaques’s notice.

Surrounded as she was by eminently moral people who often passed an entire evening without having a single idea, the lady was deeply impressed by something that seemed novel, though at the same time she considered it her duty to herself to be offended.

She termed these radical notions a lack of judgment, bearing the stamp of the era’s frivolity.”

After this delightful paragraph, (I have broken it into parts for emphasis) Stendahl gives us fair warning about just where we are.  Almost a Modernist touch, even a post-modernist foreshadowing—just to strain the idea too far.

“But frequenting drawing rooms like hers is only useful when there’s something you want to ask for.  The boredom of that meaningless life, as Julien was living it, is surely shared by the reader.  These are the barren moors and heaths of our journey.”

–The Red and the Black: 397.

Yes, of course I may be boring you, dear reader, Stendhal seems to be saying, but deal with it.   Almost with supreme confidence, isn’t it.  As though he is also thinking to himself—you will deal with it and bear with me,  dear reader, for after all, you have made it this far,  page 397 and the end, page 524, is in sight, to you, reader, if not, yet, to me, and yet we both know that this is a great book, will become a great book, and we are both of us now in thrall to it and we must both push on.