The Red and the Black

Stendhal's 'Le Rouge et le Noir' (The Red and the Black) is a classic novel that was very important to me in early formation of directions in life. I found I could identify quite strongly with Julien Sorel, who wanted a better life, a life of meaning and importance, and was torn about which direction in which to go. The Red (symbolising the church, the scarlet of cardinal's robes) and the Black (symbolising the military, the uniform, etc.) were both options held out to me early; in fact, I rejected both for a while, but have found myself drawn back in the red direction. The story is one of coming of age as a bookish fellow in a working-class family, then ambition (but not overpowering ambition; in fact, Julien's father wishes he had more), then shifting careers (rare in an era and country where one's path is usually set for life early; however, this was the post-revolution era in France, in which some things were giving way, some more than others, it seems). Julien is pulled by events rather than being the director and creator of realities; Julien finds he loves the affect of various roles in life (more than the substance and responsibilities that come with such roles) -- for instance, he loves the swagger and the horsey-ness of being a soldier, but doesn't particularly like to get dirty or have to fight. He likes the trappings of religious office, but isn't inclined so much to spirituality, and Julien ran up against this in seminary: The seminary director said to Julien: 'Truth is austere, sir. But our task in this world is austere, too, is it not? You must take care to guard your conscience carefully from this weakness: Excess of feeling for vain exterior charm.' There is love, a love triangle in fact, romance and thwarted desires, and loves fulfilled, if not completely. It ends with a dramatic homicidal act, trial, an execution, and a most bizarre funeral. The melodramatic performance of Mathilde (re-enacting an earlier story with which she was familiar in which the heroine carried the severed head of her lover to his grave) provided the most animated conversation among ministers and psychologists I have ever witnessed. Stendhal often built a character's name out of words that were descriptive, which is sometimes lost in translation as the names often don't get translated in the same way, or may have lost the immediacy of their meanings over time. Julien may be a play on Julian the Apostate, enemy of Christianity; Abbe Castanede is decidedly Spanish and inquisitional; Noiroud and Moirod come from words meaning swarthy and mottled; many other examples abound. This is a very hard book to encapsulate in such a small space. It is not easy reading, but it is rewarding reading. And again, an interior dialogue of Julien in seminary helps inform me, and keeps me thinking (both for and against in many ways): 'In the seminary, there's a way of eating a boiled egg which declares how far one has progressed down the saintly path....What wil

The Red and the Black is a profound and witty book about the rise of a poor, handsome and intellectually gifted, young provincial into the salons of High Society in Paris. This novel is also a portrait of an era in 19th century France after the exile of Napoleon to St. Helena. The powerful, witty epigrams that appear in page after page of gorgeous prose left me almost as intrigued by the talent of the author as by the unexpected twists in the exhausting love life and fascinating careers in church and state of Julian Sorel. The language of the Gard translation was truly a joy to read -- it was lyrical and rich. Stendhal's novel is an astonishing but lesser read masterpiece from the salons of Paris, which produced Moliere, Balzac and Proust to name only a few. I can't recommend highly enough this worthy and rapturous novel by Stendhal. If this is Al Gore's favorite novel, then my respect for him has gone up a notch.

Readers in my generation grew up with some pretty awful translations, with even the French and Russian writers often coming off sounding Victorian. We should be grateful for Burton Raffel and other currently active translators (including Richard Pavear and Larissa Volokonsky, who got the vernacular back into Dostoievski) for changing that. It was Raffel who finally enabled me to read and savorDon Quixote, and I'll always thank him for that. Now I also owe him thanks for making Stendahl's uneven but nonetheless great tale of Julien Sorell so engaging and readable.If any reader out there can make any sense of the mystifying jacket photograph on this book, please share that sense with us. What does it have to do with the book? More to the point, what IS it? Do the torso and the oversized hand belong to the same person, or what?But, hey, the Modern Library gave us a full cloth binding on this one, so we can forgive the jacket.

I really enjoyed this book. Unlike many reviewers, I feel the book does transcend time. American people and culture today, computers and all, are a lot like those in Stendhal's 19th century France.The main characters strike me as real, and quite complex. Julien is a typical adolescent/ young adult: Idealistic, searching and unsure of himself. To me, it is amazing to what how the world interacts with and alters his self-image. Mathilde is equally interesting. She reminds me of a flighty alternative girl, looking for a dream of simmering romance. And MME de Renal is a wonderful, believable woman, falling in love late in life, victim of the missing husband syndrome. Like people today, Stedhal's characters are a bundle of contradictions. Is Julien a villain, an angel, a self-serving climber or a man truly in love, searching for his higher self? Aloof or loveable? Is MME de Renal a devout, moral patroness, devoted to her family, or the vilest of adulators, ready to turn her back on duty for the simmer of love? Is Mathilde submissive, or arrogant and dominant?The answer to all questions is yes. We are all divided. Be honest with yourself for a minute. Aren't people sometimes cruel, and sometimes kind; Sometimes, honest, sometimes mildly deceitful, telling white lies, and sometimes bold-faced liars? Since Stendhal is faithful to this, and does not give us character in black and white, he has produced a masterpiece. One last point: You do not need a lot of historical background to understand the author's critique of society. The basic overview laid out in the introduction, and my college course in Western Civ gave me the jist of the cultural goings-on. I even found French culture around the time of Stendhal remarkably similar to our own. The emphasis on external instead of the internal (Brittany Spears, try as she might, is not near as powerful as Bob Dylan, though a good deal more polished and wealthy) strikes home. In our culture, all heroism is gone, and we are left with shallow clubbers, athletes and supermodels as role models. How like Stendhal's effete social elite.I highly recommend this book because it does transcend time.