Out of the The Red and The Black

So I actually finished this some time ago, but was not up to chattering on about it, what with the beginning of the semester, the relative joys of advising and syllabus writing--so relative. I can say reading Stendhal's The Red and the Black over the summer felt like an accomplishment. I can also say it wasn't always a pleasure, as I sympathize with others who feel it is slow to modern tastes. But also it is shockingly fast in places, like where Julien gets his military dream and then is drawn back all in the space of a few small paragraphs. And I guess I wasn't prepared for the focus on romance though I have to say it's an unusal love triangle.

What I found very modern was the creation of Julien, a character so irreligious in a religious time (even if it were all hypocrisy) and so bent on social climbing, he would do splend in contemporary America--replace all that talk of class with celebrity. My favorite line comes as he finds a sort of peace with himself in prison but is plagued with visitors: "'The worst of all prison's miseries,' he thought, 'is not being able to close the door.'"

What's in an Epigraph?

So as you will recall, totally, I am reading The Red and the Black. You know what's great? No? According to the translator Raffel, Stendhal either misquoted or made up most of the epigraphs at the beginning of the chapters: "Professor Jean-Jacques Hamm has concluded that only fifteen of the seventy-five epigraphs in The Red and the Black are correctly and verifiably attributed." I like to think he made them up, especially this one:

And am I to blame
If that's how things are?
--Machiavelli

Who's in (to) The Red and The Black

So some friends and I decided to read Stendhal's The Red and the Black--some good old fashioned beach reading. That's right, it's durn near a book club. I now see what all those people saw in having Oprah give them assigned reading.

Melody picked it out of a list we came up with. I think I suggested it for the list because of James Wood's references to it in How Fiction Works. I had actually avoided reading it in the past. I guess because of what I thought it was about. Which isn't really what it's about. What did I think it was about? Class, I guess. Which it is. Damn, I'm contradicting myself. Oh well, I contradict myself. Someone said that. But not about class the way I fear fiction is sometimes about class.

First I had to pick a translation. Damn foreigners writing in some other language. If you're going to be a famous author of classic literature, write in English! Preferably American.

So turns out translations are complicated. I settled on Burton Raffel's for The Modern Library because of this but have reservations because of that. I felt better about my choice when I went back and saw that Wood uses what is generally considered the "bad" translation.

I've just begun, but I'm already happy to see Stendhal take on some of my favorite topics, like spite and anger. Here's a couple character descriptions that I could apply to several people I know but won't name here, so if I know you, then it's probably you:

"...by clear signs of self-satisfaction and conceit, topped off by who knows what limitations, what lack of originality. Finally one is aware that his talents are confined to making sure he is paid exactly what he is owed, while paying what he himself owes only at the last possible moment."

Or

"...he was a tall young man, strongly built, with a florid face and great black whiskers--one of those coarse creatures, shameless and loud, that they call, in the provinces, good fellows."

Try these two as well:

"...he had learned by heart the entire New Testament in Latin; he also knew Monsieur de Maistre's On the Pope--and had no more belief in the one than in the other"

Or

"He thought that making a stop at church would be important to his hypocrisy."

Good stuff.