Adolphe

Benjamin Constant's novella Adolphe (1808) describes the experience of love as it unfolds between a man of high political ambitions and a woman of intellectual radiance. The matter is given further weight considering its autobiographical resonance which it had with Constant, the liberal politician immersed in disambiguous articulations during the Reign of Terror while aspiring to the French Government, and the consummate intellectual beauty of Madame De Stael, author of Corinne and a veritable giant of European literature. Madame De Stael's reputation is just a step below Rousseau and Goethe when viewed from the vantage point of the aftermath of the French Revolution and the aesthetics it forged. Benjamin Constant had come in direct contact with this lady of overwhelming virtue and indefatigable neo-classical idealizations. The hopeful parliamentarian and champion of liberalism came under her spell immediately and fought to release himself for the rest of his life. The stark sincerity of the novel is psychological store-house of moods and conflicted sentiments as they harrow a man of action into a bonding servility of hysterics and torture. The couple was consumed by love and hatred for each other and Adolphe (Benjamin in literary disguise) seem to be incapable of living with the thought, the passion and the inexorable emotional exhaustion that resulted from it. The first pages of the novella follow such a anguished sensibility, in all its enthusiasm and repudiation, its forthright disgust and lamentable need. Analytically Adolphe will follow the laws of reason and attempt an escape from such passions but he shall never avail himself of such logic, until ultimately the object and subject of his hysteria, Ellenore (De Stael) dies. The plot is a ferocious introspective devolution of a conscience that conducts a travesty of his own self attempting to make sense of the self-sacrificing emotional eruption that parallels the instability and paralysis of France amidst the Reign of Terror. Love and glory are inextricably intertwined in his cynical aptitude and his inability to make ends of things demands a force he has not within himself to summon. Vanity at times becomes lucidly displayed and at others is caricatured as the recruit of a mind suffering from the buffets of a tempest that leaves him stranded and exiled from a world he cannot fathom. Infatuating, exasperating and convulsive, this novel reads like the record a wrestling match with Eros, an epistle to Athena and a descent into the Dionysian realms of our very nature. In all of literature the only other novels that are able to depict such a theme with the like intensity and sincerity are Mme de Krüdener's novel Valérie, Marcel Proust's The Captive, November by Flaubert, Raymond Radiguet's The Devil in the Flesh, and Marguerite Duras The Lover. Of note the fact that the gorgeous and astounding literary feat of Mme de Krüdener, Valérie, remains untranslated in English. That is an outrage.

Benjamin Constant's novella Adolphe (1808) describes the experience of love as it unfolds between a man of high political ambitions and a woman of intellectual radiance. The matter is given further weight considering its autobiographical resonance which it had with Constant, the liberal politician immersed in disambiguous articulations during the Reign of Terror while aspiring to the French Government, and the consummate intellectual beauty of Madame De Stael, author of Corinne and a veritable giant of European literature. Madame De Stael's reputation is just a step below Rousseau and Goethe when viewed from the vantage point of the aftermath of the French Revolution and the aesthetics it forged. Benjamin Constant had come in direct contact with this lady of overwhelming virtue and indefatigable neo-classical idealizations. The hopeful parliamentarian and champion of liberalism came under her spell immediately and fought to release himself for the rest of his life. The stark sincerity of the novel is psychological store-house of moods and conflicted sentiments as they harrow a man of action into a bonding servility of hysterics and torture. The couple was consumed by love and hatred for each other and Adolphe (Benjamin in literary disguise) seem to be incapable of living with the thought, the passion and the inexorable emotional exhaustion that resulted from it. The first pages of the novella follow such a anguished sensibility, in all its enthusiasm and repudiation, its forthright disgust and lamentable need. Analytically Adolphe will follow the laws of reason and attempt an escape from such passions but he shall never avail himself of such logic, until ultimately the object and subject of his hysteria, Ellenore (De Stael) dies. The plot is a ferocious introspective devolution of a conscience that conducts a travesty of his own self attempting to make sense of the self-sacrificing emotional eruption that parallels the instability and paralysis of France amidst the Reign of Terror. Love and glory are inextricably intertwined in his cynical aptitude and his inability to make ends of things demands a force he has not within himself to summon. Vanity at times becomes lucidly displayed and at others is caricatured as the recruit of a mind suffering from the buffets of a tempest that leaves him stranded and exiled from a world he cannot fathom. Infatuating, exasperating and convulsive, this novel reads like the record a wrestling match with Eros, an epistle to Athena and a descent into the Dionysian realms of our very nature. In all of literature the only other novels that are able to depict such a theme with the like intensity and sincerity are Mme de Krüdener's novel Valérie, Marcel Proust's The Captive, November by Flaubert, Raymond Radiguet's The Devil in the Flesh, and Marguerite Duras The Lover. Of note the fact that the gorgeous and astounding literary feat of Mme de Krüdener, Valérie, remains untranslated in English. That is an outrage.

Benjamin Constant is a fascinating figure in the history of French letters. He was amongst a group of writers that were at the forefront of the Romantic Movement in France that included Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Constant's mistress, Germaine de Stael. Madame de Stael was a leading light of intellectual society during the directorate and the empire periods. Her salon in Geneva was the meeting place for many of the artists, philosophers, novelists and poets of her day. Benjamin Constant was her lover and most ardent admirer. Critics have long assumed that the core plot of Adolphe, which involves a younger male engaged in a prolonged liaison with an older mistress, must have been autobiographical. L. W. Tancock, in his introduction to the Penguin Classics edition, claims that this is only partly the case. He writes: "What are Eleanore and Adolphe? Of course the factual framework is the story of Anna Lindsay, the beautiful, ageing, foreign mistress of an aristocrat, and so is Ellanore's submissiveness and limited intelligence. On the other hand the possessiveness, the violence, the scenes, the sending out of a search party to bring back the wandering lover, all these things are from the miserable existence of Benjamin with Mme de Stael." So what we are left with basically is an amalgam of autobiography and fiction, somewhat the same formula Tolstoy used in Anna Karenina. Whereas Tolstoy, in his depiction of a tragic love affair was wonderfully digressive, producing a novel with various sub-plots and a large, colorful canvas, Constant opts for economy and directness. This is a short novel, what by today's standard would be called a novella. It is composed of ten short chapters and is thus, ostensibly, "an easy read." It follows one plot line with one set of characters (though there is a framing narrative, it doesn't interfere with the essential linearity of the story). The plot is rather familiar to readers of European literature. It follows the would be Cassanova, Adolphe, who, in his early twenties, decides that he must have a mistress if he is to be a man of fashion. He therefore lights upon a woman about ten years older than himself and whom he regards as a realistic target because she is already somewhat socially compromised, as she is the mistress of an older man, a certain Count P___. Elleanore is slow to succumb to Adolphe's machinations, but he is persistent and she eventually yields. The two lovers carry on a secret affair for a period and eventually Count P__ figures out what's going on under his nose and Elleanore makes the decision to leave her supporter and her children and cast her fate with Adolphe. Adolphe by this point has gotten cold feet and tries to dissuade her from leaving children and protector, but she is insanely in love and will follow Adolphe to perfidy and damnation if need be. They leave town and take their illicit love on the road. Adolphe, who has manufactured his feelings for Elleanore in the first place, becomes

before it has even begun." Or some such. As the other reviewer said, this is a sort of an anti-Werther. Adolphe himself is an amusing fellow, and he had me cringing with sympathy for his efforts to rid-or-not-rid himself of his mistress. Caveat: you might want to look for an edition that includes "The Red Notebook," a hilarious short novel about the far ranging but completely aimless adventures of a similar (but this time mistressless) young man.

"You can't always get what you want", the Rolling Stones famously admitted some decades ago. In a very French, disillusioned way, Constant explores what happens when you do get what you want. His anti-hero Adolphe manages to win the heart of the woman he has made himself believe he loves. Soon enough, he is no longer so sure about his feelings for her. By that time, however, she has already left her former partner and is emotionally dependent on Adolphe. To put it bluntly, the novel is about his trying and failing to get rid of her. The situation is getting more and more tortuous for both of them. In a way this novel can be read as an answer to Goethe's famous "Sorrows of Young Werther" in which the protagonist ends up killing himself because he cannot get the girl he loves. Of course Goethe's book was a lot more successful at the time than Constant's. The worth of Constant's novel is that it is one of the few instants in which somebody speaks out with whom somebody else is unhappily in love with. There is less poetry in that position than in the opposite one, but Constant's stark psychological realism in the tradition of the French moralists makes this one a gripping read with a provocative conclusion.