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Stendhal, The Red And The Black (Rouge Et Noir)

Having picked up and read The Red and Black many times, from beginning to end, and attempted and failed to find the thread –the golden nugget– that makes it a great book, I’ve finally given up. From now on I will just enjoy the novel. However, I will share some of my impressions.

Stendhal’s The Red and Black is considered a classic, yet we don’t find high tragedy, high drama, deep ideas, or thrilling adventures of any kind. Then why is it that every time I read it I find something new–something refreshing–in it?

So, what is the eternal allure of The Red and The Black?

By today’s standards the sex scenes in the book are non-existent; imagine the main character –Julien Sorel–  spending hours, days, and nights debating whether to reach, grab, and hold a woman’s hand or not. The action is also non-existent. No cloak and dagger adventures. Yet, the novel sizzles!

For one, I can say that it must be the psychological aspect of the book. In this pre-Freudian novel, we can see the unconscious forces –libido, impulses, instincts, fixations, drives, obsessions, passions, and manias– at full throttle in the characters. But in particular we get a pretty good understanding of the insufferable, incomparable, and uncompromising Julien Sorel. Next, we get a fair understanding of the spoiled rich brat Mathilde de La Mole, and no less in importance: of the naive and sexually inexperienced Mme. De Renal. These three fated characters form the fatidic triangle.

But I must admit it is a novel of intrigue, an intrigue that doesn’t get resolved until the very end of the novel, with the gruesome demise of a main character, and whose comeuppance I cannot divulge here.

Given the time (Napoleonic times) in which the story is set, the seduction scenes are more psychological than realistic. It is the high and the lows, the moodiness, the agreements and disagreements, the firmness and weaknesses of the trio that keeps the reader involved. Ah, something else: the pride. Pride is an essential ingredient and perhaps the most important propelling force in the characters’ psyches.

And as in Shakespeare’s tragedies where one laughs at the jesters’ jokes rather than cry for the sorrows of the players, with Julien’s antics we laugh, but we also cry for him.

If you like the bizarre, you will also find it here. One of my favorite passages in the novel is when the hero, Julien Sorel, uses a ladder not only to ford a river and to negotiate terraces, but also to climb up and into Mme. De Renal’s boudoir. The ladder of success becomes the symbol not only of social climbing, but of self-enlightenment, for in the end Julien gets to know himself. We find the image of the ladder in the Bible (Jacob), in Plato’s Republic, in Wittgenstein, as in many other writers; so we can say that Stendhal knew what he was doing when he chose this tool.

The Red and The Black is a novel that will never go away, that will never get old, and that we will read and re-read over the years. Again, what is the secret of it? It is impossible to tell–just enjoy it! Eric Auerbach, a major critic, attempted to get to the bottom of it with his famous analysis entitled, “In the Hotel de la Mole” of his equally famous book: Mimesis-but to no avail.

And that is just fine with me, so that generations to come will go on enjoying the reading without anyone spoiling it for them.

I do, however, have a theory as to the perennial allure of the novel: just as Don Quijote, Tarzan, Jay Gatsby, and Highly Golightly are prototypes, so is Julien Sorel. When an author invents a fictional prototype, the novel achieves immortality. And woe be to the authors whose characters fall a notch below prototypes–oblivion awaits them!

About the Author

Retired. Former investment banker, Columbia University-educated, Vietnam Vet (67-68).
For the writing techniques I use, see Mary Duffy’s e-book: Sentence Openers.
To read my book reviews of the Classics visit my blog: Writing To Live

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