Stendhal on Love

Author: (French) Stendhal
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-08-01
Features: Reasons to read this book: He said, "Love is a miracle of civilization"; he also said, "Love is a fragrant flower that needs to be plucked from terrifying cliffs and precipices"; he further stated, "A marriage without love is against the natural state" and "Only unions governed by true passion are the only ever-legal and eternal unions." He is regarded as a romanticist who kept a distance from romanticism, a pre-revolutionary world nostalgic for anti-power. He was clearly a dreamer and a soft-hearted enthusiast, yet deliberately disguised himself as a cynic; he was clearly passionate, yet not fond of rationalistic analysis. Recommended for the following groups to read this book: seasoned players in love or those just starting to fall in love, lovers of or opponents of French literature, frequent heartbreakers or "lovers of lovers," middle-aged individuals or teenagers, and all middle and high school students.
This book was almost ignored upon its first publication. Eleven years after its release, only 17 copies were sold. But today, no one doubts that it is a great work. Thinkers are often not accepted by their contemporaries, but Stendhal, who lived at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, was "writing for the 20th century." His "greatness" was recognized a century later. This book is considered a typical work that fully showcases the author's "dual personality": deep feeling and cold analysis, sentimentality and heightened reason, arrogance and self-abuse, genuine emotion and manipulation. He was deeply in love with Mme. de Mertins, but she did not love him or understand him. As a "heartbreaker," he achieved this book. It is an outpouring of a "heartbreaker's" emotions, so this book is seen as a "secret confession" of the author's own emotional experiences and pursuits. In this regard, it is somewhat similar to the masterpiece by the great writer Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther.