Figures du destin stendhalien (review)

Kliebenstein investigates the ways in which Stendhal uses (trans)rhetorical figures to structure a life or history in order better to record them. These figures are transrhetorical because they are applied to sequences of actions (within a dispositio) rather than to sequences of words (within an elocutio). As a result, they can be applied both to fiction and to life, here treated as another text, without falling into the trap of biographical determinism. Repeated nods to Barthes and a late appeal to Lacan notwithstanding, Kliebenstein takes care to elaborate his own theory and terminology. The latter can be just as 'consomptible' as the redundant codified rituals identified in Stendhal's fiction. At times terms are invented — Berthier, in his avuncular preface, notes Kliebenstein's particular fondness for ancient Greek — and then quickly discarded without adding greatly to the reader's understanding of points that have already been explained, very effectively, in French. 'Il s'agit là d'un code inutile, d'un code pour le code. C'est qu'il y a un plaisir du code, et ce qui confirme cette "autotélie" c'est qu'il existe des codes pour rien' (p. 211). Kliebenstein's arguments, however, are clear, elegantly developed and punctuated by a series of richly detailed analytical set pieces. The main body of the book is divided into two sections: 'Les systèmes d'annonce déclarés' and 'Un schème destinal et ses variations'. In the first, Kliebenstein analyses and catalogues Stendhal's various interrogations of destiny: the omens, prophecies, predictions and other forms of prolepsis found in Stendhal's writings. In the second, he goes on to assert the primacy of another rhetorical figure, hendiadys, in a broad-ranging and often delightful analysis of Stendhal's fictional and (auto)biographical writings. The focus on prolepsis is not new, but Kliebenstein's account is admirably intricate and comprehensive. The attention paid to hendiadys also draws on previous critics, Prévost for instance, and their observations that so many events in Stendhal's texts occur twice. The transrhetorical definition of hendiadys allows Kliebenstein, nevertheless, to draw important and original distinctions between the doubling of events and their further iteration. When an event occurs twice, twice only and the second time in modified form, the result is completion, pleasure, success; when an event occurs three or more times, the result is incompletion, fiasco, failure. The figure of hendiadys is applied to Stendhal's fiction, his sexual escapades, the myth of Napoleon, with very satisfying results, culminating in a brilliantly handled analysis of Henry Brulard's 'cella', a spelling mistake that becomes 'la métaphore des actes et des conduites' (p. 311). Kliebenstein proleptically addresses the objection that Stendhal abhors the falsity of classical rhetoric. He does more than enough to justify his distinctive transrhetorical approach and this book makes a splendid contribution to Stendhal scholarship. It is a shame, however, that he should have chosen entirely to ignore criticism written in English. There are numerous occasions when one would have liked to see Kliebenstein engage, for example, with Brooks, Jefferson or Pearson in the same highly productive way that he engages with French scholars in the field.