Frederic Stendhal, biography
"The Life and Work of Frederic Stendhal"
The real name of the writer is Henri Marie Bayle. He was born in Grenoble in the south of France into the family of a lawyer. When the writer was 7 years old, he lost his mother. The father was a very callous and rude person, so the boy’s gentle nature was drawn to his maternal grandfather, who instilled in the boy the ideals of enlightenment: a thirst for knowledge and service to his homeland, a love of art and literature.
At the age of 13, the boy was sent to study at the Grenoble central school, where he was predicted to have a future as an engineer, because... aptitude for mathematics and other exact sciences was clearly expressed. The personality of Napoleon, who rose from the bottom of society, had a great influence on young Henri; this example played a major role in the fact that the young man joined Napoleon’s army, with whom he traveled to many countries: Germany, Poland, Austria, Russia. After the fall of Napoleon, the Restoration period began: the aristocrats regained power and tried to restore the old order, i.e. your privileges. They persecuted like-minded people of Napoleon, so Stendhal was forced to leave his homeland and emigrate to Italy, where his literary activity began, at first he wrote books about the art of Italy. Although this country was foreign to Bayle, it became another homeland for him; moreover, the action of his largest novels takes place in Italy. He was simply delighted with this country: Italian opera, Cimarosa's music and Correggio's paintings. Stendhal was delighted with the Italians and their temperament, considering it more natural than the French. He loved Italy, especially Rome and Milan, so much that he even proposed to carve the words “Enrico Beyle, Milanese” on his gravestone. He also loved Italian women, and from that time on his whole life was simply a memoir of love adventures in Italy. Returning to France, he begins to write works of fiction: “Armans”, “Vanina Vanini”, “Red and Black”. In 1830, He again travels to Italy, this time as a French consul, to the town of Civita Vecchia, where he continues to write the novel “The Monastery of Parma.” Sudden death from a heart attack on March 22, 1842 prevented the completion of two novels, Lucien Levene and Lamiel.
However, the writer did not immediately become famous and loved; the path to the top of literature was long and thorny. Stendhal said that he wrote for only a few, and that fame would come to him only after 1880. And he turned out to be right. Most likely, his main problem was the inconsistency with the stereotypes of the literary time and genre in which he worked. His passion for individuals who put themselves in the absolute, such as Napoleon, did not correspond to the canons of that time, but he could not be called a romanticist either. Stendhal lacked the epic scope of Hugo and the sentimentality of Lamartine. And only when these geniuses of the pen left the stage it became clearly visible what the peculiarity of Stendhal’s works was, his strong point was psychological realism.
Two thematic lines can be traced in Stendhal's work:
- Modern French reality after the Great French Revolution (works: “Armans”, “Lucien Levene”, “Red and Black”.
- Italy (books about art “Vanina Vanini”, “Parma Monastery”).
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Frederic Stendhal is the literary pseudonym of Henri Marie Beyle, a famous French writer who is one of the founders of the psychological novel genre and one of the most prominent writers in France in the 19th century. During his lifetime, he gained fame less as a writer of fiction and more as a writer of books telling about Italian sights. Born on January 23, 1783 in Grenoble.
His father, a wealthy lawyer who lost his wife early (Henri Marie was 7 years old), did not pay enough attention to raising his son.
As a pupil of Abbot Ralyan, Stendhal became imbued with antipathy towards religion and the church. Passion for the works of Holbach, Diderot and other enlightenment philosophers, as well as the First French Revolution, had a huge impact on the formation of Stendhal's views. For the rest of his life, he remained faithful to revolutionary ideals and defended them as resolutely as none of his fellow writers who lived in the 19th century did.
For three years, Henri studied at the Central School of Grenoble, and in 1799 he went to Paris, intending to become a student at the Ecole Polytechnique. However, Napoleon's coup made such a strong impression on him that he enlisted in the active army. Young Henri found himself in the Italian North, and this country remained forever in his heart. In 1802, filled with disappointment in Napoleon's policies, he resigned, settled for three years in Paris, read a lot, becoming a regular at literary salons and theaters, while dreaming of a career as a playwright. In 1805 he again found himself in the army, but this time as a quartermaster. Accompanying troops on military campaigns until 1814, he, in particular, took part in the battles of Napoleonic army in Russia in 1812.
Having a negative attitude towards the return of the monarchy in the person of the Bourbons, Stendhal resigned after the defeat of Napoleon and moved to Italian Milan for seven years, where his first books appeared: “The Life of Haydn, Mozart and Metastasio” (published in 1817), as well as research “Rome, Naples and Florence” and the two-volume “History of Painting in Italy”.
The persecution of the Carbonari that began in the country in 1820 forced Stendhal to return to France, but rumors about his “suspicious” connections served him badly, forcing him to behave extremely carefully. Stendhal collaborates with English magazines without signing the publication with his name. A number of works appeared in Paris, in particular, the treatise “Racine and Shakespeare” published in 1823, which became the manifesto of the French romantics. These years in his biography were quite difficult. The writer was filled with pessimism, his financial situation depended on occasional earnings, and he wrote a will more than once during this time.
When the July Monarchy was established in France, in 1830 Stendhal had the opportunity to enter the civil service. King Louis appointed him consul to Trieste, but unreliability allowed him to take this position only in Civita Vecchia. For him, who had an atheistic worldview, sympathized with revolutionary ideas, and composed works imbued with the spirit of protest, it was equally difficult for him to live in both France and Italy.
From 1836 to 1839, Stendhal was in Paris on a long vacation, during which his last famous novel, “The Abode of Parma,” was written. During his next vacation, this time short, he came to Paris for literally a few days, and there he suffered a stroke. This happened in the fall of 1841, and on March 22, 1842 he died. The last years of his life were overshadowed by a difficult physical condition, weakness, and inability to work fully: this is how syphilis manifested itself, which Stendhal contracted in his youth. Unable to write himself and dictating texts, Henri Marie Bayle continued to compose until his death.
Years of life: from 01/23/1783 to 03/23/1842
Unrecognized during his lifetime, the greatest French writer of the 19th century, author of the novels “The Red and the Black”, “The Parma Monastery”, “Lucien Leuven”.
Real name: Henri-Marie Bayle.
Born in Grenoble (France) in the family of a wealthy lawyer Chérubin Bayle. His grandfather was a doctor and public figure, and like most of the French intelligentsia of that time, he was keen on the ideas of the Enlightenment and was an admirer of Voltaire. Stendhal's father was fond of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. But the family's views changed significantly with the beginning of the revolution, the family had a fortune and the deepening of the revolution frightened it. Stendhal's father was even forced to go into hiding.
The writer's mother, Henrietta Bayle, died early. At first, Serafi’s aunt and his father were involved in raising the boy, but since his relationship with his father did not work out, his upbringing was left to the Catholic abbot Ralyan. This led Stendhal to hate both the church and religion. Secretly from his teacher, under the influence of the views of his grandfather Henri Gagnon, the only relative who treated Henri with kindness, he began to become acquainted with the works of enlightenment philosophers (Cabanis, Diderot, Holbach). The impressions he received during his childhood from the First French Revolution shaped the worldview of the future writer. He retained his affection for revolutionary ideals throughout his life.
In 1797, Stendhal entered the Central School in Grenoble, the purpose of which was to introduce public education in the republic instead of religious education, and provide the younger generation with knowledge of the ideology of the bourgeois state. Here Henri became interested in mathematics.
At the end of the course he was sent to Paris to join the Ecole Polytechnique, but he never got there, joining Napoleon's army in 1800, in which he served for more than two years, and then returned to Paris in 1802 with the dream of becoming a writer.
Having lived in Paris for three years, studying philosophy, literature and English, Stendhal returned to serve in the army in 1805, with which he entered Berlin in 1806, and Vienna in 1809. In 1812, Stendhal, of his own free will, took part in Napoleon’s campaign in Russia. He flees from Moscow along with the remnants of the army to France, preserving the memories of the heroism of the Russian people, which they showed in defending their homeland and resisting French troops.
In 1814, after the fall of Napoleon and the capture of Paris by Russian troops, Stendhal traveled to Italy and settled in Milan, where he lived almost continuously for seven years. Life in Italy left a deep mark on Stendhal’s work, playing a large role in shaping the writer’s views. He enthusiastically studies Italian art, painting, and music. Italy inspired him for a number of works, and he wrote his first books - “The History of Painting in Italy”, “Walks in Rome”, the short story “Italian Chronicle”. Finally, Italy gave him the plot of one of his greatest novels, “The Parma Monastery,” which he wrote in 52 days.
One of his early works is the psychological treatise “On Love,” which was based on his unrequited love for Matilda, Countess Dembowski, whom he met while living in Milan and who died early, leaving a mark on the writer’s memory.
In Italy, Henri becomes close to the Carbonari Republicans, which is why he is watched with suspicion. Not feeling safe in Milan, Stendhal returned to France, where he wrote unsigned articles for English magazines. In 1830, after entering the civil service, Stendhal became consul in the papal estates in Civita Vecchia.
In the same year, the novel “Red and Black” was published, which became the pinnacle of the writer’s work. In 1834, Stendhal began writing the novel Lucien-Leven, which remained unfinished.
In 1841 he suffered his first stroke of apoplexy. Stendhal, unrecognized by his contemporaries, died in 1842 after a second stroke of apoplexy, during his next visit to Paris. The coffin with the body was accompanied to the cemetery by only three of his close friends.
On the tombstone, as he requested, were carved the words: “Henri Bayle. Milanese. Lived, wrote, loved.”
Information about the works:
Stendhal is the name of the German city in which the famous 18th century German art critic Winckelmann was born.
Bibliography
Novels:
- Armans (1827)
- (1830)
- (1835) - unfinished
- (1839)
- Lamiel (1839–1842) - unfinished
Novels:
- Rose et le Vert (1837) - unfinished
- Mina de Vanghel (1830)
- (1837–1839) - includes the short stories “Vanina Vanini”, “Vittoria Accoramboni”, “The Cenci Family”, “Duchess de Paliano”, etc.
Frederic Stendhal (real name Henri Beyle, 1783-1842) was born in Grenoble. His mother died when the boy was only seven years old. The father was a famous and wealthy lawyer, had an extensive practice, which left no time to communicate with his son. Henri was educated and raised by a Catholic priest. Apparently, he was an unimportant teacher, and instead of interest in religion, the future writer developed only contempt and hatred for it. But he was attracted to the works of enlightenment philosophers Denis Diderot and Paul Holbach. His acquaintance with them coincided with the Great French Revolution (1789-1799), and this became a true school for his intellectual maturation.
The time came to study in Paris, and Henri went to the famous Ecole Polytechnic college. However, already in Paris, his opinion regarding his field of life changed dramatically, and in 1805 Henri Beyle entered military service. He was ready to follow Emperor Napoleon through fire and water, but he did not have to fight. At first, the future writer served at the headquarters, and later as a quartermaster. He described in detail in thick notebooks what happened to him during his campaigns. Fate brought him to Moscow. Perhaps it was here that he first thought about historical justice, seeing how the beautiful ancient city was burning, not wanting to obey the invaders. The fall of Napoleon began in Moscow, and the previously convinced Bonapartist for the first time felt that he was losing confidence in the emperor. Later he wrote in notes about Napoleon: “Napoleon’s main desire was to humiliate the civil dignity of man...”
After the overthrow of Napoleon and the return to power of the Bourbon dynasty, Stendhal moved to Italy. Since then, he has visited France only on short visits. The military pension is not enough for a decent life, and Bayle is trying to get a consular post. However, he did not succeed immediately. In 1821, uprisings of Carbonari revolutionaries took place in several cities. Stendhal was expelled from the Austrian possessions of Superstitious Italy. Only in 1881 did he become French consul in Civitavecchia, a papal estate near Rome. In France at this time, King Louis Philippe began to rule, whom, despite the consular post he received from him, Stendhal called “the king of sharpers.”
In Italy, Stendhal studied art, music, and wrote novels and short stories. "Were conceived here" History of painting in Italy», « Rome. Florence. Naples», « Walking around Rome", short stories " Italian Chronicles" Novel " Parma monastery" was also conceived and partially written in Italy. Readers drew attention to the treatise “ About love"(1822), in which love is just an objectively studied phenomenon. If so, manifestations of love can be classified. Stendhal identified four types: love-passion, love-attraction, physical love and love-vanity.
The famous novel " Red and black"was published in 1830. During his lifetime, Stendhal was not famous. This happened partly because he had a passion for pseudonyms: today more than a hundred pseudonyms under which Henri Bayle was hiding have been identified! However, the pseudonym Stendhal will forever remain the true name of the great French writer. In 1840, Balzac wrote "Etude on Bayle". He called Stendhal a wonderful artist and argued that only the most sublime and refined minds could understand him. Stendhal himself realized that the time of his popularity had not yet come, and often said that it would come at the end of the 19th century (in the 80s) or in the 30s of the 20th century.
Until the end of his life, the writer worked hard. He died in Paris from apoplexy.
Encyclopedic YouTube
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✪ Documentary films - The Hunt for Happiness, or Stendhal's Orc Love
✪ Stendhal, Bombe
✪ Stendhal: “The insignificance of literature is a symptom of the state of civilization”
✪ Stendhal "Red and Black". Brief summary of the novel.
Subtitles
Biography
early years
Henri Bayle (pseudonym Stendhal) was born on January 23 in Grenoble in the family of lawyer Chérubin Bayle. Henrietta Bayle, the writer's mother, died when the boy was seven years old. Therefore, his aunt Seraphi and his father were involved in his upbringing. Little Henri did not have a good relationship with them. Only his grandfather Henri Gagnon treated the boy warmly and attentively. Later in his autobiography “The Life of Henri Brulard” Stendhal recalled: “I was entirely brought up by my dear grandfather, Henri Gagnon. This rare person once made a pilgrimage to Ferney to see Voltaire, and was wonderfully received by him..." Henri Gagnon was a fan of the Enlightenment and introduced Stendhal to the works of Voltaire, Diderot and Helvetius. From then on, Stendhal developed an aversion to clericalism. Because of Henri's childhood encounter with the Jesuit Ryan, who forced him to read the Bible, he had a lifelong horror and mistrust of clergy.
While studying at the Grenoble central school, Henri followed the development of the revolution, although he hardly understood its importance. He studied at school for only three years, mastering, by his own admission, only Latin. In addition, he was interested in mathematics, logic, studied philosophy, and studied art history.
In 1802, gradually becoming disillusioned with Napoleon, he resigned and lived for the next three years in Paris, educating himself, studying philosophy, literature and English. As follows from the diaries of that time, the future Stendhal dreamed of a career as a playwright, a “new Moliere”. Having fallen in love with the actress Mélanie Loison, the young man followed her to Marseille. In 1805 he returned to serve in the army again, but this time as a quartermaster. As an officer in the quartermaster service of the Napoleonic army, Henri visited Italy, Germany, and Austria. During his hikes, he found time to think and wrote notes about painting and music. He filled thick notebooks with his notes. Some of these notebooks were lost while crossing the Berezina.
Literary activity
After the fall of Napoleon, the future writer, who had a negative perception of the Restoration and the Bourbons, resigned and left for seven years in Italy, in Milan. It was here that he prepared for publication and wrote his first books: “Biographies of Haydn, Mozart and Metastasio” (), “History of Painting in Italy” (), “Rome, Naples and Florence in 1817”. Large chunks of the text of these books are borrowed from the works of other authors.
Having procured himself a long vacation, Stendhal spent a fruitful three years in Paris from 1836 to 1839. During this time, “Notes of a Tourist” (published in 1838) and the last novel “The Abode of Parma” were written. (Stendhal, if he did not come up with the word “tourism,” was the first to introduce it into wide circulation). The attention of the general reading public to the figure of Stendhal in 1840 was attracted by one of the most popular French novelists, Balzac, in his “Etude on Bayle”. Shortly before his death, the diplomatic department granted the writer a new leave of absence, allowing him to return to Paris for the last time.
In recent years, the writer was in a very serious condition: the disease progressed. In his diary, he wrote that he was taking medications and potassium iodide for treatment, and that at times he was so weak that he could hardly hold a pen, and therefore was forced to dictate texts. Mercury medications are known to have many side effects. The assumption that Stendhal died of syphilis does not have sufficient evidence. In the 19th century, there was no relevant diagnosis of this disease (for example, gonorrhea was considered the initial stage of the disease, there were no microbiological, histological, cytological and other studies) - on the one hand. On the other hand, a number of figures of European culture were considered to have died from syphilis - Heine, Beethoven, Turgenev and many others. In the second half of the 20th century, this point of view was revised. For example, Heinrich Heine is now considered to have suffered from one of the rare neurological ailments (more precisely, a rare form of one of the ailments).
On March 23, 1842, Stendhal, having lost consciousness, fell right on the street and died a few hours later. Death most likely occurred from a recurrent stroke. Two years earlier, he suffered his first stroke, which was accompanied by severe neurological symptoms, including aphasia.
In his will, the writer asked to write on the gravestone (done in Italian):
Arrigo Bayle
Milanese
Wrote. I loved. Lived
Works
Fiction constitutes a small fraction of what Bayle wrote and published. To earn his living, at the dawn of his literary career, he in great haste “created biographies, treatises, memories, memoirs, travel sketches, articles, even original “guides” and wrote much more books of this kind than novels or short story collections” ( D. V. Zatonsky).
His travel essays “Rome, Naples et Florence” (“Rome, Naples and Florence”; 3rd ed.) and “Promenades dans Rome” (“Walks around Rome”, 2 vols.) were popular with travelers throughout the 19th century for Italy (although the main estimates from the standpoint of today's science seem hopelessly outdated). Stendhal also owns “The History of Painting in Italy” (vols. 1-2;), “Notes of a Tourist” (fr. "Mémoires d'un touriste", vol. 1-2), the famous treatise “On Love” (published in).
Novels and stories
- The first novel - “Armance” (French “Armance”, vol. 1-3) - about a girl from Russia who receives the inheritance of a repressed Decembrist, was not successful.
- "Vanina Vanini" (fr. "Vanina Vanini",) - a story about the fatal love of an aristocrat and a carbonari, filmed in 1961 by Roberto Rossellini
- “Red and black” (fr. "Le Rouge et le Noir"; 2 t., ; 6 hours, ; Russian translation by A. N. Pleshcheev in “Domestic Notes”, ) - the most important work of Stendhal, the first career novel in European literature; was highly praised by major writers, including Pushkin and Balzac, but was not initially successful with the general public.
- In the adventure novel “Parma Abode” ( "La Chartreuse de Parme"; 2 volumes -) Stendhal gives a fascinating description of court intrigues at a small Italian court; The Ruritanian tradition of European literature dates back to this work.
- The novel “Red and White”, or “Lucien Leuven” (fr. "Lucien Leuwen", - , published).
- The autobiographical story “The Life of Henri Brulard” (French) was also published posthumously. "Vie de Henry Brulard", , ed. ) and “Memoirs of an Egotist” (fr. "Souvenirs d'égotisme", , ed. ), unfinished novel “Lamielle” (fr. "Lamiel", - , ed. , completely) and “Excessive favor is destructive” (, ed. -).
Editions
- The complete works of Bayle in 18 volumes (Paris, -), as well as two volumes of his correspondence (), were published by Prosper Mérimée.
- Collection op. edited by A. A. Smirnova and B. G. Reizov, vol. 1-15, Leningrad - Moscow, 1933-1950.
- Collection op. in 15 vols. General ed. and entry Art. B. G. Reizova, t. 1-15, Moscow, 1959.
- Stendhal (Bayle A. M.). Moscow during the first two days of the French entry into it in 1812. (From Stendhal’s diary)/Message. V. Gorlenko, note. P. I. Barteneva // Russian Archive, 1891. - Book. 2. - Issue. 8. - P. 490-495.
Characteristics of creativity
Stendhal expressed his aesthetic credo in the articles “Racine and Shakespeare” (1822, 1825) and “Walter Scott and the Princess of Cleves” (1830). In the first of them, he interprets romanticism not as a specific historical phenomenon inherent in the beginning of the 19th century, but as a revolt of innovators of any era against the conventions of the previous period. The standard of romanticism for Stendhal is Shakespeare, who “teaches movement, variability, the unpredictable complexity of worldview.” In the second article, he abandons Walter Scott’s tendency to describe “the clothes of the heroes, the landscape among which they are located, their facial features.” According to the writer, it is much more productive in the tradition of Madame de Lafayette to “describe the passions and various feelings that excite their souls.”
Like other romantics, Stendhal longed for strong feelings, but could not close his eyes to the triumph of philistinism that followed the overthrow of Napoleon. The age of Napoleonic marshals - figures in their own way as bright and integral as the condottieres of the Renaissance - was replaced by "loss of personality, drying out of character, disintegration of the individual." Just as other French writers of the 19th century sought an antidote to vulgar everyday life in a romantic escape to the East, to Africa, less often to Corsica or Spain, Stendhal created for himself an idealized image of Italy as a world that, in his view, retained direct historical continuity with the Renaissance, dear to his heart.
Meaning and influence
At the time when Stendhal formulated his aesthetic views, European prose was entirely under the spell of Walter Scott. Progressive writers preferred a slow-paced narrative with extensive exposition and lengthy descriptions designed to immerse the reader in the environment where the action takes place. Stendhal's moving, dynamic prose was ahead of its time. He himself predicted that it would be appreciated no earlier than 1880