L'Annee Stendhal 4 (review)

L'Année Stendhal 4. Paris: Klincksieck, 2000. Pp. 224. ISBN 2-252-03343-6

By now a well-established annual review, L'Année Stendhal continues with the successful format of its first three issues. This fourth volume includes eleven articles, of which four, contributed by professors at British universities, are grouped under the heading "Stendhal en Angleterre." The "Notes et documents" section contains four entries, the "Chronique" section features six announcements, and the "Carnet critique" comprises twenty-two book reviews.

In the opening article, Moya Longstaffe revisits the staple Stendhalian theme of happiness, which she observes to be less the fruit of pursuit than the product of good fortune; she likens it to a Pascalian state of grace. Her consideration of the options available to Stendhal's male and female protagonists for finding happiness enables her to develop illuminating comparisons. Most telling is the case of Lamiel, whose death is, for Longstaffe, "la suprême protestation contre l'injustice de la société" (18) in the most pessimistic of Stendhal's novels (25). With "Vanina Vanini ou la répé-tition tragique," C. W. Thompson assesses the effectiveness of narrative technique in this somewhat neglected short story. What Thompson admires is Stendhal's manip-ulation of polarities and tensions throughout the narrative as a means of accumulating dramatic capital that pays exceptional dividends in the closing gothic scene. Richard Bolster provides detailed commentary on an article devoted to the Mémoires d'un touriste in an 1839 issue of the conservative London Review. He concludes that the British writer, who had more praise for Stendhal's book than one might have expected, underestimated the complexity of Stendhal's social and political thinking but took proper note of the book's veiled predictions of future political upheaval.

In a dazzling piece of textual sleuthing, Sheila M. Bell makes a convincing case for the importance of Charles de Brosses as an inspiration for Stendhal's life and es-pecially his autobiography. Analysis of several passages in Vie de Henry Brulard and other writings highlights the considerable affinities between Stendhal and the eighteenth-century magistrate he much admired. As a sort of "éminence joyeuse," Bell observes, de Brosses offered Stendhal some relief from the substantial but less positive influence of Rousseau. Another comparative piece is Georges Kliebenstein's highly original essay on Stendhal and Roland Barthes. Noting that Barthes was writing about Stendhal when he died, Kliebenstein investigates numerous similarities between the two authors: notions of public discourse ("esprit appris" and "doxa") and literary realism ("petits faits vrais" and "effets de réel"), tastes in music and art, a bent for theorizing pleasure, and habits of perception and expression which suggest that "Stendhal hantait confusément le discours barthésien" (159). A third com-parative study, by Alice Tibi, takes a more speculative approach in addressing short works by Stendhal and Balzac. In "Ernestine-Sarrasine. 'Un amour de soi,' " Tibi unearths a disconcerting array of similarities. These include the symbolic resonances of names, ambiguities of gender, features of plot and thematic structure ("l'atroce déception des héros amoureux" 156), and a singular perspective on self-love. Cécile Meynard also pairs Stendhal with Balzac in proposing another chapter for the ongoing debate over the relative merits of the authors' realism. Focusing on representations of provincial life, Meynard deems that Stendhal outscores his formidable rival in certain areas, thanks to his emphasis on the plain and the ordinary (as opposed to the Balzacian predilection for the picturesque and the extraordinary), and to his keen sense of contemporary history.

In a thorough and well-documented account, Francesco Spandri reopens the dossier on Stendhal's early ambition to be a comic playwright. He shows how Henri Beyle's obsessive theorizing during his twenties never led to a coherent comic aesthetics or to a completed play. Sarga Moussa, recalling Stendhal's acclaimed treatment of the Waterloo episode in LaChartreuse de Parme, identifies signs of developing narrative technique...