Henri Marie Beyle And The Numb State

Wasn't expecting Stendhal to be this amusing. Like Houellebecq he appears unabashed in a willingness to build a narrative based on the blind stupidity of public opinion, all so matter-of-factly, resolutely marching onward. From my Penguin Charterhouse,

"(Fabrizio) had just taken the trouble to be born at the moment when the French were driven out, and found himself, by accident of birth, the second son of that Marchese del Dongo, who was so great a lord, and with whose fat, pasty face, false smile, and boundless hatred for the new ideas you are already acquainted. The whole of the family fortune was entailed upon the elder son, Ascanio del Dongo, the worthy image of his father. He was eight years old, and Fabrizio two, when all of a sudden that General Bonaparte, whom everyone of good family understood to have been hanged a long time since, swooped down from the Mont Saint-Bernard. He entered Milan: that moment is still unique in history; imagine a whole populace madly in love! A few days later, Napoleon won the battle of Marengo. It is needless to say any more. The frenzied excitement of the Milanese was at its height; but this time it was mingled with thoughts of vengeance: these kindly people had been taught to hate."

Moving the narrative along, Stendhal writes shortly after, "We pass rapidly over ten years of progress and happiness, from 1800 to 1810." Oh yeah, those years historians of a generalizing stripe like to call the Napoleonic Wars.

Deciding to look up Germaine de Staël's Considerations On The Principal Events of The French Revolution (1818), I see that Stendhal's little history of the Napoleonic sweep appears to be accounted for by so many salon conversations,

"Yet nothing was so brilliant as the rapid conquest of Italy. Doubtless, the desire which the enlightened Italians have always felt to unite themselves into one state, and thus to possess so much national strength as to have nothing either to fear or to hope from strangers, contributed much to favor the progress of General Bonaparte. It was with the cry of Italy forever that he passed the bridge of Lodi; and it was to the hope of independence that he owed his reception among the Italians. But the victories which subjected to France countries beyond her natural limits, far from favoring liberty, exposed it to the danger of military government."

Freedom imposed abroad, Germaine, you don't say. J. Christopher Herold's biography of Madame de Staël Mistress to an Age spends much too little time on her intellectual development - because when he does decide to treat it he treats it very well - reading more like a morally aggrieved biographer discovering he now has a novel on his hands, and as such, is required to bring the thing to its foregone conclusion, namely the death of its subject. Nevertheless, the exasperation does produce some amusing scenes, such as that time at the estate when Benjamin Constant, in one of his romantic fits, decides to try and kill himself yet again,

"It was midnight, and the guests at Mézery had retired to their rooms; suddenly the house was filled by screams and moans, which, upon investigation, were found to emanate from Benjamin's quarters. An empty bottle of opium stood on his bedside table; he was dying, but he wanted to say a last farewell to the hostess. Madame Rilliet-Huber ran off in quest of Germaine while one of the guests irrupted into Mathieu's room, to inform him of the tragedy. Monsieur de Montmorency was in his dressing gown, calmly reading the Confessions of Saint Augustine. 'Throw that man,' he cried, 'out of the window. All he does is disturb the peace of this house and bring dishonor on it by a suicide.'"

In tone, reminiscent of Quilty retiring to the master bedroom "with a burst of royal purple where his ear had been," saying, "Get out, get out of here," coughing and spitting and in a nightmare of wonder. It's so wonderful seeing the irony shine through the older you get.

(Added the next morning: Reading over the quotes again, I can't decide which is more hilarious, Stendhal's "had just taken the time to be born" or Herold's "to inform him of the tragedy.")