Regards de Stendhal sur le monde modern by Michel Crouzet (review)

CROUZET, MICHEL. Regards de Stendhal sur le monde moderne. Paris: Kimé, 2010. ISBN 978-2-84174-507-4. Pp. 482. 35 a. Crouzet brings us Stendhal—the boy, the man, the novelist, the traveler, the art critic, the social commentator—from across a multitude of texts. He establishes a matrix of relationships which includes a vast array of cultural and historical material. At first glance, the critic’s take in this study might seem psychoanalytic; he probes Stendhal’s writing to illuminate his childhood, his traumas, and psyche. Yet, Crouzet focuses his criticism on how Stendhal’s mindset fits into an ideology of the modern. This latter term, which conjures up visions of a century in motion and upheaval, foregrounds a series of irreducible oppositions—republicanism and absolutism, reality and aesthesis, Frenchness and alterity—all of which place Stendhal’s voice firmly in his epoch. Crouzet engages Stendhal’s need for realism, his conscience as a historian, his aspiration to mediate his time, while emphasizing, at the same time, his romantic mind and artistic craft. Indeed, the writer’s reflections on art and his travel writing make him profoundly aware of aesthesis and the necessities of transforming reality. Still, he was prone to analyzing the disturbances brought about by revolution and economic malaise. The chapters in this volume provide an informed look at the writer and his perspective on art and reality. Crouzet asks: “Sur quel point le jeune Beyle va-t-il procéder à une analyse critique, je dirais, clinique du mal du siècle?” (55). While Stendhal may have forged his identity against René’s mal du siècle, he sought out to transform it, to integrate the heroism and action that defined the century. No one embodied those qualities for Stendhal like the Emperor. “Et comme l’évocation de Napoléon est inévitablement polémique, il est bien vrai que l’engagement stendhalien en sa faveur est tourné vers l’avenir” (115). Stendhal’s re-adjudication of the past defines his present and future. It infuses Stendhal’s Italianism, whereby a medieval city such as Florence becomes a model of democracy and a salient reminder of Stendhal’s ‘modern.’ In practice, he seeks to break down the barriers that separate us from our collective and cultural past. Even his brand of aesthetic realism, which calls upon a whole host of literary devices and structures, insists upon the integration of a recognizable reality into the narrative world; according to Crouzet, “dans le roman, le réel est vraiment le réel, il menace les structures morales, intellectuelles et parfois esthétiques, il déjoue, comme un sublime inversé, les possibilités même de l’analyser” (249). Stendhal’s obsession with space and historical material does not preclude engagement with myth and symbolism. His romanticism finds its sources in the stark landscapes of the North, which he opposes to the luxuriant vegetation and sensorial plenitude of the South. Stendhal’s view of the modern and romanticism, terms inextricable from one another, coalesces in his peripatetic account of French society in Mémoires d’un touriste. Crouzet explains: “Il y a chez Stendhal une jouissance, presque un lyrisme du mouvement et de la rapidité, et c’est par là qu’il est identique à son voyageur; ‘au XIXe siècle, tout court au dénouement avec une rapidité qui abrège les calculs.’” (359). An astute domestic and foreign observer, Stendhal analyzes the phenomena of industrialization and the mercantilization of interactions: he laments the desolation of certain regions of France with few possibilities for human contact, as well as the plight of eighteen-hour workdays for English laborers. Both represent the death of culture and socialization. Crouzet’s study provides a compelling account of Stendhal’s commitment to his own century. If we do not come away Reviews 1261 thinking of Stendhal as modern in the same way, as say, Baudelaire, Zola, or Huysmans , we contemplate a remarkable and nuanced portrait of a writer who grapples in new and exciting ways with his time. Texas Tech University Christopher Bains FRIGERIO, VITTORIO, éd. Nouvelles anarchistes: la création littéraire dans la presse militante (1890–1946). Grenoble: Ellug, 2012. ISBN...