Penguin Classics Love

by Unknown

• ISBN13: 9780140443073
• ISBN10: 014044307X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1975-12-30
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

Drawing on history, literature, philosophy and his own experience of unrequited passion, 'Love' is a thinly disguised picture of the author's innermost feelings. Stendhal's obsession with Mathilde Viscontini Dembowski is at the heart of this book. For her part, she neither returned his love nor understood him. In an attempt to explain his feelings to her--and to exorcize his love--he dissects his passion. Bringing together the conflicting sides of his nature, the deeply emotional and the coolly analytical, Stendhal constructed a work that is both acutely personal and universally applicable.

Author Biography

Henri Marie Beyle, known through his writing as Stendhal, was born in Grenoble in 1783 and educated there at the École Centrale. A cousin offered him a post in the Ministry of War, and from 1800 he followed Napoleon’s campaigns in Italy, Germany, Russia and Austria. In between wars, he spent his time in Paris drawing rooms and theatres.

After the fall of Napoleon, he retired to Italy, adopted his pseudonym and started to write books on Italian painting, Haydn and Mozart, and travels in Italy. In 1821 the Austrian police expelled him from the country, and on returning to Paris he finished his book De l’amour. This was followed by Racine et Shakespeare, a defense of Romantic literature. Le Rouge et le noir was his second novel, and he also produced or began three others, including La Chartreuse de Parme and Lucien Leuwen. None of his published works was received with any great understanding during his lifetime.

Beyle was appointed Consul at Civitavecchia after the 1830 revolution, but his health deteriorated and six years later he was back in Paris and beginning a Life of Napoleon. In 1841 he was once again recalled for reasons of illness, and in the following year suffered a fatal stroke. Various autobiographical works, Journal, Souvenirs de l’egotisme and La Vie de Henri Brulard, were published later, as his fame grew.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION	9	(14)
Biographical Background	9	(2)
Background to De l'Amour	11	(1)
Metilde	12	(3)
The Book De l'Amour	15	(7)
The Text	22	(1)
Suggestions for Further Reading	22	(1)
Preface to the First Edition	23	(2)
First Attempt at a Preface	25	(6)
Second Attempt at a Preface	31	(2)
Final Preface	33	(282)
BOOK ONE
On Love	43	(2)
Concerning the Birth of Love	45	(3)
Concerning Hope	48	(2)
4	50	(1)
5	51	(1)
The Salzburg Bough	51	(2)
Concerning the Different Beginnings of Love for the Two Sexes	53	(1)
8	54	(3)
9	57	(1)
10	57	(2)
11	59	(1)
Crystallization Continued	59	(2)
Concerning the First Step, High Society, Misfortunes	61	(1)
14	62	(2)
15	64	(1)
16	65	(1)
Beauty Usurped by Love	66	(1)
18	67	(1)
Beauty's Limitations Further Discussed	68	(2)
20	70	(1)
Concerning `First Sight'	71	(2)
Concerning Infatuation	73	(1)
Concerning `Thunderbolts'	73	(3)
Journey into an Unknown Country	76	(5)
The Introduction	81	(1)
Concerning Modesty	82	(6)
Concerning Glances	88	(1)
Concerning Feminine Pride	89	(6)
Concerning Women's Courage	95	(2)
A Strange and Sorry Spectacle	97	(1)
Extract from Salviati's Diary	98	(6)
Concerning Intimacy	104	(5)
33	109	(1)
Concerning Confidences	109	(2)
Concerning Jealousy	111	(5)
More Concerning Jealousy	116	(2)
Roxana	118	(1)
Concerning Wounded Self-Esteem	119	(5)
Love at Loggerheads	124	(11)
Cures for Love	128	(2)
(iii)	130	(5)
BOOK TWO
40	135	(2)
Concerning the Love-Life of Nations - France	137	(3)
More Concerning France	140	(2)
Italy	142	(3)
Rome	145	(1)
England	146	(3)
England (continued)	149	(3)
Spain	152	(2)
Love in Germany	154	(4)
A Day in Florence	158	(5)
Love in the United States	163	(2)
Love in Provence, before the Conquest of Toulouse by Northern Barbarians in 1328	165	(4)
Provence in the Twelfth Century	169	(5)
Arabia	174	(7)
Fragments from the Divan of Love	177	(4)
Concerning the Education of Women	181	(3)
Objections to Education for Women	184	(7)
Continuation	191	(5)
Concerning Marriage	194	(2)
Concerning What is Called Virtue	196	(1)
Marriage - The Position in Europe	197	(7)
Switzerland	200	(4)
Werther and Don Juan	204	(8)
Concerning Fiascos	212	(103)
Various Fragments	217	(58)
APPENDIX
Concerning Courts of Love	275	(9)
The Salzburg Bough	284	(9)
Ernestine or The Birth of Love	293	(22)
An Example of Love among the Wealthy Class in France	315