Stendhal, The Red and the Black

Introduction

Opening Passage:

The small town of Verrières may be regarded as one of the most attractive in the Franche-Comté. Its white houses with their high pitched roofs of red tiles are spread over the slope of a hill, the slightest contours of which are indicated by clumps of sturdy chestnuts. The Doubs runs some hundreds of feet below its fortifications, built in times past by the Spaniards, and now in ruins.

Summary: The novel takes place toward the end of the Bourbon Restoration, during which France still lives in the shadow of the French Revolution and the rise and fall of Napoleon. The aristocracy lives in fear of another Revolution, referring to it repeatedly; the specter of Napoleon lingers throughout the land, a source of fear for some and for dreams of glory for others. It is a society that cannot help but be rife with hypocrisy. Through this society we follow Julien Sorel, son of a carpenter, handsome, intelligent, with a prodigious memory. He is one of those inspired with dreams of glory by the figure of Napoleon, and would, were he able, go into the military as an officer; but it is not a military age, and it is very difficult to become an officer. So instead he goes the route that seems available to him: the Church. Of course, he is a complete unbeliever; he believes in the God of Voltaire, not that of the Bible. But obviously this does not get promotions in the Church, so he sets himself to fooling everyone, to the point that he memorizes the Bible in Latin, word for word. He becomes tutor to the children of M. de Renal, where he meets Madame de Rênal. Over time the two fall in love and have an affair; this ends up forcing a situation in which Julien has to leave and go to seminary. At seminary his hypocrisy is seen through almost immediately by his duller fellow students, who see clearly enough that even when he has the right answers it has too much of the book in it, and his fine future suddenly does not seem so assured. But it is in seminary that he finds the major protector in his life, M. Pirard, who manages, after leaving the seminary himself, to get Julien a position with the Marquis de la Mole, an important and wealthy government official. There he meets Mathilde de la Mole, the Marquis's daughter; like Julien she is caught up in dreams of glory, but hers are inspired not by Napoleon but by the heroic deeds of her ancestors. They have an affair, the result of which is a pregnancy, which touches off the crisis on which the novel ends.

A great deal happens in the novel beyond what this bare summary can suggest. The work is usually classified as a major example of realism, but although it's on only a first reading, I have to say that anyone who thinks this novel realistic has been duped. Not only are none of the characters entirely reliable, it becomes quite clear as we proceed through the story that the narrator himself is not reliable -- he keeps trying to pushing the reader into a particular point of view, and shows repeatedly that he is playing to, and sometimes with, what he assumes to be the reader's prejudices. The narrator, in short, is as much a hypocrite as the characters, as is, in fact, necessary given that he is bound up in the very same society they are. The psychological close-ups of the characters are brilliant, but they are also contradictory; for instance, the narrator in turns treats Julien as audacious and non-audacious, intelligent and non-intelligent, as it suits him. In context these assessments are always plausible; but another thing will happen and the narrator will give us a completely contradictory assessment. Even the epigraphs are often made-up or misleading. The narrative also makes rare but definite use of farce and melodrama -- these are some of the best parts of the book, in fact -- and the primary mechanisms of plot are not realistic but consist of chance and the unpredictable irrationality of various characters. (The hero, or anti-hero, Julien, is an extraordinarily passive character: his few plans go astray, and almost every success he achieves is because of luck or favor.) The detail, especially the psychological detail, is certainly rich, but it is a façade. The novel is not just about hypocritical characters; it is a hypocritical novel about hypocritical characters, told from a hypocritical point of view. This in itself would make the book a tour de force. Julien Sorel is not a very sympathetic character -- he is, of course, a hypocrite through and through, quite deliberately (one of his heroes is Tartuffe), to such an extent that were it not for some humanizing episodes he might come across as psychopathic -- but given his society and the sheer disparity between his dreams of glorious activity and the purely passive and ambiguous successes he does achieve, it is very difficult to have such a sour and smirking amusement at his life as the narrator does. Everything is ambiguous in this novel; one could miss this, because the narrator is very good at intruding and telling you the way it is -- but, again, the narrator repeatedly shows himself untrustworthy.

Quite a complexity; I doubt this book can be done justice on a single reading. At the same time, I confess, I don't have a huge urge to read it again.

Favorite Passage: The character I liked best in the book was Korasoff, the Russian prince. He's also the only character who is presented in a humorous light by the narrator who is genuinely funny.

In London he at last made acquaintance with the extremes of fatuity. He made friends with some young Russian gentlemen who initiated him.

'You are predestined, my dear Sorel,' they told him, 'you are endowed by nature with that cold expression a thousand leagues from the sensation of the moment, which we try so hard to assume.'

'You have not understood our age,' Prince Korasoff said to him; 'always do the opposite to what people expect of you. That, upon my honour, is the only religion of the day. Do not be either foolish or affected, for then people will expect foolishness and affectations, and you will not be obeying the rule.'

Recommendation: Probably for some people and not for others.

On Akasie on Episcopalian Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori

The Wall Street Journal has a really bad opinion article on the recent Episcopalian General Convention. We get shots like this:

Formally changing the structure of General Convention will most likely formalize the reality that many Episcopalians already know: a church in the grip of executive committees under the direct supervision of the church's secretive and authoritarian presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori. They now set the agenda and decide well in advance what kind of legislation comes before the two houses.

Now, say what one will about the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, but "secret and authoritatian" seems a little doubtful, to say the least; if anything, she often seems frank enough when she does speak that it's probably a good thing she comes across generally as a rather quiet and unassuming person. At least, even her severest critics don't usually bring up "secretive and authoritarian" charges. Heretical, modernistic, even impatient, I have seen, but secretive and authoritarian are not really criticisms that even her critics usually bring up. And, as geoconger notes, it's not actually true that she or the executive committees set the agenda for the General Convention. The major fault, apparently, for which she gets these and other sinister labels throughout the article, is simply for insisting on Episcopalian canonical process when congregations decide to break communion. Yes, it's a controversial thing to do; it may be that there are better ways to do it than sue to retain ownership of Episcopalian property; but it hardly makes for a general character of secretive authoritarianism.

Schori herself is actually an interesting character. She originally intended to go into medicine, but also had an interest in marine science, and was turned off by the atmosphere of her pre-med program, which she felt was morally toxic. So she went into oceanography, and got her Ph.D. in that, then went on to focus on research. After graduate school she began to take a bit more interest in religion than she had during her studies, and became fascinated at the same time with the history of science. Much later she became an Episcopalian priest, after discovering to her surprise that there were kinds of teaching that she actually liked certain kinds of teaching. Far from being any sort of ruthless or dominating person, she seems mostly to be just an eminent representative of a kind of spirituality that's quite common, especially among Episcopalians -- exactly as you would expect. The Episcopalians are going through a rough patch right now, with lots of disagreements, and Katherine Jefferts Schori has made a number of controversial decisions in the midst of those disagreements; but this does not make someone "secretive or authoritarian," or any of the other things this article implies about her.

Two Poem Drafts

Narcissus

The eyes of my lady,
sweet pools of Narcissus,
reflect back ideas
I see in my mind,

entrap and enchant me
with love of myself
as seen through the shimmering
eyes of my lady.

My Vices

My dragons are so picturesque
I know not how to kill them;
I watch the warm and sunny skies
as dragons swarm to fill them.

They grow from little pup-like cubs
to mountains soaring high
with flames so fierce and searing hot
that near them all things die.

But, oh! when endless numbers fly
and chaos wreak on all
I still can't kill the splendid things
though all the world should fall.

Holy Roman Saxon

Today is the feast day of St. Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor. He was the last ruling member of the Saxon dynasty of the Holy Roman Empire that had been created by Otto the Great. He did not succeed his father on the throne; rather he succeeded, if I recall correctly, his second cousin, Otto III, who had died childless. He was a savvy political operative: he had been on his way to assist Otto III who was under siege when Otto had died; Henry quickly took over all the royal insignia in order to reduce the possibility of a nasty succession dispute then spent some years steadily consolidating his power against those of his cousins who thought they deserved it more. Standard operating procedure, if you ever happen to be the newly ascendant Holy Roman Emperor: work very, very quickly to get across to the almost-Emperors that almost is not enough. This sometimes meant some rather bloody episodes, especially in the hornet's nest that was eleventh-century Italy. Like his predecessors, and especially Otto the Great, he knew how to maneuver with regard to the Church: he vigorously supported Catholic bishops, but always in ways that were politically useful. You can look at almost everything he did and see at least two reasons for it. For instance, he was an enthusiastic supporter of the spreading standard of clerical celibacy. Why? Because it reduces the chances that church property and power will be passed down as private property and dynastic power, which both purifies the Church and reduces the political danger of bishops amassing enough power over generations to challenge the Emperor, but at the same time makes possible an influential class of non-nobles who can be allies against the nobles. That is, of course, how you will have to think yourself if you ever become Holy Roman Emperor: everything has to be weighed not merely in terms of whether it is good, but whether it conduces to the peace, order, stability, and prosperity of the Empire.

But it does make him not what you would expect to see on the calendar of saints. Cunning and occasionally brutal, he used the Church itself as an instrument of power in good Ottonian fashion. He had an undeniably genuine respect for the God, the Church, and the Faith -- but bishops themselves he saw as political agents, and he trusted them as far as he trusted any other political agents, and no farther -- which is to say, he made no concessions to them he did not have to make. But people aren't on the calendar because they had good policies or even because they are obviously admirable (although on many points Henry did and was); they are on the calendar because they have imitable virtues of extraordinary value that are seen in their service to Christ. One can question Ottonian policy, but Henry really cared. He wasn't a cynical manipulator, he wasn't a self-aggrandizer; he devoted himself to the utmost to God and to the good of his people as best he knew how. Even when he was very sick he continue to travel all over his dominions -- not a small feat, especially in those days -- to fix problems and maintain peace. It was not for nothing that he was remembered as Good King Henry, and it is not for nothing that he is the only Holy Roman Emperor to be canonized.

One is the Loneliest Number and is Natural but Odd

There is an interesting post at the "Maverick Philosopher" on van Inwagen's argument for the univocity of 'exists'. I think Vallicella goes way too easy on the first premise of the argument:

Number-words are univocal in sense: they mean the same regardless of the sorts of object they are used to count.

This seems to me to need more precision to avoid a common misunderstanding of what it is to be univocal or equivocal; words are univocal or equivocal in use, not in the abstract. Taken strictly as stated, this premise would require us to say that number-words are never reasonably used in a metaphorical or in an ironic sense. But this is certainly not true. I can count ironically, e.g., if I were making fun of somebody for miscounting something. Those will not be univocal with ordinary counting uses, which are really being presupposed here. More seriously, however: while it involves a count in some form, and the use of the word can clearly be linked to ordinary counting uses, it is simply not at all obvious that 'one' in "One is the loneliest number" is univocal with 'one' in "One is the first odd natural number". Actually, it's pretty obvious that it isn't. We know, for instance, that the two do not have the same scope: you can have one item in a couple, but not in the sense in which it is the loneliest number.

The rest of the post is quite good, though.

Rough Timeline for Early Nineteenth-Century France

Reading The Red and the Black I'm finding that I've needed to refresh my memory a bit about the historical context Stendhal is assuming, which was a pretty crazy period in French history. So here are just some notes, with special focus on military and ecclesiastical matters.

1713 The Jesuits manage a victory over the Jansenists when the latter are condemned by Pope Clement XI in Unigenitus.

1720 In response to the Marseilles Plague, the last significant outbreak of bubonic plague, citizens begin to devote themselves to the Sacred Heart; people elsewhere follow suit, thus accelerating the spread of the devotion outside of religious communities.

1730 Unigenitus begins to be legally enforced in France.

1756-1763 Seven Years' War.

1765 The Feast of Sacred Heart begins to be allowed as a liturgical celebration throughout France.

1773 Society of Jesus is suppressed by Pope Clement XIV.

May 1774 Louis XVI ascends to the throne of a financially weak (in great part due to the Seven Years' War) and very unpopular government.

1775 Giovanni Angelo Braschi becomes Pope Pius VI; he was a compromise candidate who was chosen because he was likely to continue enforcing the suppression of the Jesuits.

1776 Louis XVI supports the American colonies in the American Revolutionary War; this will turn out to be very expensive for France.

May 1789 To raise money the Louis XVI is forced to call the Estates-General. The Third Estate declares itself the National Assembly. The First Estate, which consists of the Catholic clergy, votes to support them. The French Revolution begins.

The National Assembly still faces the same financial problems that had previously existed. As a solution, it nationalizes all property of the Catholic Church in November, and begins to sell off Church land.

1790 The National Assembly abolishes monastic and religious orders in France. In July the Civil Constitution of the Clergy is passed; all Catholic priests become employees of the state in the eyes of the law. An election system for priests, inconsistent with Church custom and canon, is established. The National Assembly requires an oath of allegiance from clergy. About a quarter of the clergy take it; the rest flee, are exiled, or are imprisoned. (In the novel, the Bishop of Besancon is said to have been a survivor of the Emigration; that is, he either fled or was exiled around this time.)

1791 Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, better known as Mirabeau, dies; a famed politician, he had tried to mediate between the royals and revolutionaries at the outbreak of the Revolution, and spent the end of his life trying to turn the Revolution in the direction of a British-style constitutional monarchy.

France annexes the Papal territory of Comtat Venaissin (which includes Avignon).

1792 The First Coalition against France, led by Austria, is formed, and the War of the First Coalition begins.

21 January 1793 King Louis XVI is executed.

3 March 1793 The French government begins closing Catholic Churches, with additional anti-Catholic measures. This, plus a conscription drive, leads to the War in the Vendée, a counter-revolution of peasants, shopkeepers, and craftsmen banded together as the Catholic and Royal Armies.

5 September 1793 The Terror under Robespierre begins. This will include further attempts to de-Catholicize French society.

10 November 1793 Feast of Reason marks the height of the dominance of the atheistic Cult of Reason. The Catholic Church in France is in shreds by this point.

21 October 1793 Clergy refusal to swear the oath of allegiance is made a capital crime, as is harboring any such clergy.

December 1793 Republican army decisively defeats the Catholic and Royal Armies first at Le Mans and then at Savenay. Scattered attempts to revive the Vendée revolt will continue over the next several years, and the region will continue to be a royalist bastion for the next several decades.

12 March 1794 Struggle between the atheists and deists among the Revolutionary leaders tips sharply in deist favor as the leaders of the Cult of Reason are sent to the guillotine.

5 April 1794 Georges Danton is guillotined.

7 May 1794 Cult of the Supreme Being official announced; the Feast of the Supreme Being is held 8 June 1794.

27 July 1794 Thermidorean Reaction: France begins to shut down the Terror when the Assembly votes to execute Robespierre.

21 February 1795 Limited Catholic worship is made legal again, but some things (ringing church bells, religious processions, public displays of the Cross) are still illegal.

8 June 1795 Louis-Charles, child of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, dies at the age of 10. Even though he never ascended the throne in any official way, and had lived the period since his father's death in prison, the Bourbons will later treat him as King Louis XVII.

March 1796 Napoleon takes command of the Army of Italy begins his First Italian Campaign in the struggled with Austria; the Papal States are subdued. Napoleon rejects the views of the Directory that the Pope should be dethroned because he is worried that the Kingdom of Naples would take advantage of the resulting power vacuum. Instead, he marches into Austria to force peace negotiations; the result is the Treaty of Leoben. First Coalition collapses; only Britain continues to fight.

15 February 1798 Berthier, a general under Napoleon, enters Rome unopposed and declares that Rome is now the Roman Republic. When Pope Pius VI refuses to renounce all temporal authority, he is taken prisoner back to France.

1798 Napoleon begins his Egyptian Campaign; it's an indirect way to attack the British, since Napoleon concludes that France is not yet strong enough to invade across the channel.

Austria, Russia, and their allies regroup and the War of the Second Coalition against France begins.

A British fleet under Horatio Nelson defeats a French fleet at the Battle of the Nile.

24 August 1799 Napoleon returns to France, despite having received no orders to do so; as it happens, the Directory had sent such orders but they had not arrived.

29 August 1799 Pope Pius VI dies in prison in Valence, France.

9 November 1799 The era of the Directory ends in coup; Napoleon, Sieyès, and Ducos become provisional Consuls, and the French Consulate begins. Napoleon outmaneuvers Sieyès by drafting the Constitution of the Year VIII and getting himself elected First Consul.

14 March 1800 Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti becomes Pope Pius VII.

June 1800 The Papal States are restored and Pius VII returns to Rome.

1801-1802 The War of the Second Coalition winds down as first Austria and then Britain sign treaties with France. Britain, however, protests some unilateral moves by Napoleon and refuses to evacuate Malta as the treaty requires.

15 July 1801 Pius VII and Napoleon sign the Concordat of 1801; it restores some privileges of the Catholic Church, but does not recognize it again as the official religion, the clergy must still swear an oath of allegiance, and the Church must give up all claim to any Church property confiscated after 1790.

8 April 1802 Napoleon officially bans the Cult of Reason and the Cult of the Supreme Being.

1803 His government more or less bankrupt and war with Britain on the horizon, Napoleon raises money with the Sale of Louisiana.

May 1803 Britain declares war against France.

1804 Napoleon's police uncover an assassination plot against him, apparently by pro-Bourbon forces.

Napoleon declares himself Emperor of France, beginning the First French Empire.

1805 Austria and Russia join Britain as the War of the Third Coalition against France begins; Napoleon is forced to call off an intended invasion of Britain.

December 1805 Napoleon defeats Austria at Austerlitz, forcing Austria to withdraw from the Third Coalition. The Treaty of Pressburg effectively ends the Holy Roman Empire.

1806 Prussia joins the Coalition against France; thus begins the War of the Fourth Coalition against France, although there had been no cessation in hostilities.

Napoleon defeats Prussia at the Battle of Jena-Auerstadt in a matter of weeks.

Napoleon defeats Russia at the Battle of Friedland.

July 1807 The Treaties of Tilsit end the War of the Fourth Coalition; but Britain and Sweden continue to fight.

1807 Napoleon invades Portugal with the help of Spain to enforce Portuguese compliance with the Continental System boycott against Britain. The Peninsular War begins.

Napoleon invades Spain.

British and Portuguese forces under Wellington begin to cooperate with Spanish guerilla forces; French hold on the region begins to deteriorate.

1808-1809 France invades and annexes the Papal States; Pius VII is taken prisoner and exiled to Savona.

1809 Austria attempts to break treaty, thus beginning the War of the Fifth Coalition against France, on Napoleon's eastern flank. Austria is defeated. Britain continues to fight.

1812 Napoleon invades Russia. The French defeat the Russians outside of Moscow at the Battle of Borodino, but it is a Pyrrhic victory. Napoleon withdraws. Anti-French forces take heart and the War of the Sixth Coalition against France begins.

1813 Napoleon defeats the Coalition at the Battle of Dresden, but the Coalition is able to regroup and defeat the French at the Battle of Leipzig. There is a steady string of British victories in Spain. Napoleon is forced to withdraw to France.

Treaty of Fontainebleu ends the First French Empire and exiles Napoleon to Elba. Pius VII's exile ends.

1814 Sixth Coalition invades France. Massively outnumbered, Napoleon manages to outmaneuver opponents in a string of victories in the Six Days' Campaign, but the Coalition continues to advance. Paris is captured by the Coalition in March.

Napoleon intends to march on Paris, but faces mutiny. Napoleon abdicates; Congress of Vienna opens. Under the influence of Talleyrand, and due to the political state of Europe, the European nations are convinced -- to very different degrees -- that the French monarchy should be restored.

Louis XVIII signs the Charter of 1814 to comply with the preconditions given the Congress of Vienna for his restoration. It gives equality before the law and protects freedom of religion but makes the Catholic Church the state religion. The Bourbon restoration begins in earnest; the Bourbons maintain as a matter of principle that they had always been the rightful government of France, and that Louis-Charles was in fact King Louis XVII, immediately after whose death Louis XVIII became king.

Papal States are restored.

7 August 1814 Suppression of the Jesuits is lifted by Pius VII.

1815 Napoleon escapes from Elba and marches on Paris, but is defeated by forces under Wellington at Waterloo. Napoleon is exiled to Saint Helena.

1818 Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney becomes parish priest of the little parish of Ars (hence the name he is usually known by, the Curé D'Ars); he finds that his parishioners, while firmly Catholics, also know only bits and pieces about the Catholic faith, since they had never been properly catechized. He begins the decades-long work of repair.

1819 Joseph de Maistre publishes On the Pope, which argues that the Pope should be considered the supreme temporal authority in Europe.

5 May 1821 Death of Napoleon.

28 September 1823 Annibale Francesco Clemente Melchiore Girolamo Nicola Sermattei della Genga becomes Pope Leo XII against the active opposition of France.

1824 Marguerite Marie Alacoque, seventeenth century devotee of the Sacred Heart, is declared Venerable by Leo XII.

16 September 1824 Louis XVIII dies; Charles X ascends the throne.

1825 Anti-Sacrilege Act is passed, which makes it a capital crime to steal consecrated Eucharistic hosts.

10 February 1829 Pope Leo XII dies.

13 March 1829 Francesco Saverio Castiglioni becomes Pope Pius VIII

October 1829 Stendhal begins developing the idea for a novel.

May 1830 Stendhal gives his novel the title The Red and the Black. Nobody actually knows why; the usual explanation is that it indicates the two major choices, the army or the Church, but French uniforms were blue. Some have thought that the colors are intended to indicate a roulette wheel; and one can very well see from this timeline that an ecclesiastical career was certainly a gamble throughout this period.

1830 July Revolution (Second French Revolution/Trois Glorieuses): The end of the Bourbon Restoration, the beginning of the July Monarchy.

30 November 1830 Bartolomeo Alberto Cappellari becomes Pope Gregory XVI.

November 1831 The Red and the Black is published.

The Horns of Elfland Faintly Blowing

The Splendor Falls
by Lord Alfred Tennyson

The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O, hark, O, hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O, sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying,
Blow, bugles; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river;
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.