This meant: the thing I've longed for so much, as the supreme good, the thing to which I've sacrificed my life for the past three years, bores me. In fact, until the very end, when Stendhal falls in love with Italy, he is a young man not comfortable in his own skin: 'Is Paris no more than this?' When Seraphie dies and he finally gets to Paris, he is disconsolate because in Paris there are no mountains, as in his native Dauphiné. He refuses to call himself Beyle, adopting instead the name Brulard, which belonged to his late, beloved mother. Why is it called The Life of Henry Brulard when Stendhal's real name is Marie-Henri Beyle? If we learn anything in the first two-thirds of the book, it is that Marie-Henri loathes his father and his aunt Seraphie, who seems to spend most of her time belittling and punishing him. This is the strangest of autobiographies: In fact, it is like a set of notes for an autobiography, with repetitions, footnotes that are nothing more than a reminder to the writer, and crude illustrations of rooms, streets, and scenes that played a part in the early life of Stendhal (Henri Marie Beyle).Īnd it is only the first twenty or so years in Stendhal's life that are covered, comprising his childhood in Grenoble, his first few months in Paris, and his happiness at joining Napoleon's army in its invasion of Italy.

Stendhal has pointed me in the direction of both Rousseau and Saint-Simon. He regards his account as a summary of the fluctuations of the heart and that's what makes it wonderful, not just the illegible diagrams but the recognition of his folly and caprice. His adventures in the Grande Armée confirmed that, though he is likewise both suspicious of and hostile to the aristocracy. I don't believe I am in shape for a similar escapade but I thoroughly enjoyed his account of a lonely Republican spirit in a house of bigoted Royalists, though he's quick to admit that in terms of personal contact he couldn't live with proles. This was nearly a perfect time to read this, as the author was essentially my age when he attempted to look back and gauge the defining events of his childhood.

This was likely my favorite book since Čapek's Newts earlier this surreal year of anxiety and pestilence. Spinach and St-Simon have been my only enduring tastes, at least after that of having lived in Paris on a hundred louis a year, writing books.

The Life of Henry Brulard by Stendhal