Essay – How Stendhal’s Charterhouse of Parma revolutionised the novel

Marie-Henri Beyle, the French author who lived from 1783 to 1842, was a “romantic realist”. So, clearly of an oxymoronic bent and with an overactive sense of humour. He adopted the nom de plume M. de Stendhal, officier de cavaliere from 1817 onwards, having fallen in love with a blonde, Wilhelmine, in Stendal – a town in the heart of Germany, Saxony-Anhalt, 125 km to the west of Berlin. He added the “h” to make correct German pronunciation more likely.

Prior to that he had assumed – dizzyingly – up to 200 nom de plumes, publishing only one work under his own name, The History of Painting in 1817. Wilhelmine, or Minette, his term of endearment for Miss W., was clearly something special. She was his “star of the north”. From then on Stendhal never adopted another nom de plume.

However, he did, notoriously, adopt other stars of the opposite sex, reaching out to whole constellations – in the south, west and east and most other points of the compass in between. Stendhal was a notorious womaniser. He eventually contracted syphilis and died, not of the disease, but more likely overapplication of the toxic cure.

The Charterhouse of Parma, published in 1839, three years before his death, holds me in the grip of nostalgia. I first acquired a copy in 1968 – an edition in the original French (pretentious from the start) – bought to impress a potential girlfriend. Result? The book impressed, but I did not. When she moved on, I consoled myself by actually reading the thing.

Instantly, I was distracted from my temporary grief by Stendhal’s world of military campaigns, chivalric deeds and political intrigue. Latterly I also read The Red and the Black, published in 1830, chronicling the attempts of a provincial youth to overcome his humble background and rise above his roots through a combination of talent, hard work, deception and hypocrisy. Do I feel a blubbing political autobiography coming on?

I did not return to my favourite, Charterhouse, until last summer, when I happened across a 1999 translation by Richard Howard, an American poet, academic and translator. It was like the return of an old, familiar friend – as if I had never left Stendhal’s romantic Parma. This classic, revisited after 50 years, did not disappoint.

The book has epic sweep, yet is founded on intimate, absorbing detail. At one level it reads like a soap opera – the hero escapes a tall tower, using a long rope; a lover is wooed from his cell window, using a complex system of semaphore on sheets of paper. At another, political intrigue, every bit as complex as current European shenanigans, is played out in the fictious court of Parma. Villains are ruthless, heroes are undaunted, maidens – not many of those, mind you – are in distress.

Stendhal’s hero, Fabrice del Dongo, a headstrong, young, Italian aristocrat, has – to put it mildly – a comprehensive CV. Here is a barebones version of the plot. Fabrice is an admirer of Napoleon, unusual for an Italian of the era, when France and Italy were at war. He joins Napoleon’s army and sees action ranging across Europe.

The wayward Fabrice leaves Napoleon’s service, then, incoherently, becomes a prelate in the Catholic Church. A prelate with no interest in religion, but plenty in women. His beautiful Aunt Gina, Duchess of Sanseverina, and her lover, the devious, married, Prime Minister of Parma, Count Mosca, then try to establish the former soldier/prelate/philanderer at court, but a repellent Prince Ranuce-Erneste IV, who lusts after Gina, has Fabrice imprisoned in the notorious Farnese Tower.

Being locked up in the tower does not deter Fabrice, who embarks on his star-crossed love affair with the gaoler’s daughter, Clelia, who boasts the twin virtues of being beautiful – and dull.

Charterhouse was hailed as a classic on publication. Honoré de Balzac – Stendhal’s constant competitor for recognition by the French literary establishment – in a lengthy review which must stand as one of the bitchy literary world’s greatest acts of disinterested generosity, lavished praise, saying; “One sees perfection in everything”.

Sixty years later Andre Gide ranked Charterhouse as “the greatest of all French novels”. In 1874 Henry James found it to be “among the dozen finest novels we possess”. This was recognition on an unusual global scale.

Why? The novel combines a sweeping narrative pace, fascinating characterisation and a sense of “what the hell?” freshness. The words poured out of Stendhal in a torrent. He closeted himself away for 50 days in the autumn of 1838 to emerge triumphantly on Boxing Day with a volume of 500 pages. His characters are vivid, sardonically human and politically manipulative, a none too subtle combination of Italian passion and French worldliness. The freewheeling, driving plot makes for breathless reading. It is a book almost impossible to put down.

Contemporary readers will be familiar with this restless, impetuous style and the unruly emotions that drive the characters. Stendhal is a 19^th century precursor of the WhatsApp and Twitter generation. It may seem an outdated classic, but Charterhouse is written in a style today’s generation of reader – demanding instant gratification and pace of plot – will immediately warm to.

From the start, Fabrice is an impassioned rebel. As a teenager he defies his father and sneaks off to fight for his hero, Napoleon. The episodes of this soldier’s life are detailed and reflect the sheer day to day drudgery of military campaigns, artillery bogged down in mud, the struggle for food, bitter weather, contradictory orders and the necessary force of a will to live. War is detail, not glory.

Stendhal based this phase of Fabrice’s life on his own military experience, in Napoleon’s army. He took part in the fateful 1812 Moscow campaign and was lucky to survive, shunning a conventional river crossing outside Moscow during the retreat and fording the Berezina River instead. Those on the bridge were shot to pieces. Stendhal was an author forged in the frontline of battle.

Fabrice is a compelling character study because his idealism is silhouetted against the often-farcical realities of life. Arriving on the battlefield of Waterloo with a bad hangover, he falls asleep, misses most of the battle and wakes up unsure of who has won or lost. “Had I ever seen a battle? … Had this battle been Waterloo?”

The evil protector of a girlfriend is murdered, so Fabrice finds himself locked up in the Farnese Tower. The obvious thing to do is fall in love with the gaoler’s daughter, Clelia. Never able to master the art of living as a free man, Fabrice paradoxically finds true happiness in the tower, from which he can never quite stir himself to escape.

Stendhal is astonishingly easy to read in the original French. His language flows naturally and his grammatic constructions are concise. If the original French does not float your boat, I recommend Mr. Howard’s translation from the many available, including the definitive C.K. Scott Moncrieff’s 1925 version. The Moncrieff is still perfectly readable, but not so idiomatically up to date.

Charterhouse’s reputation endured well into the 20^th century. Improbably, in a 1926 novel, Bella by Jean Giraudoux, at a memorial service for schoolmates who fell in the Second World War, the narrator hears the voice of a young man tormented by the thought he had never read Charterhouse and pleading for a precis of the book, “in a word,” because “with the dead there are no sentences”. In mid war period literary circles Stendhal’s masterpiece was regularly evoked, even by dying First World War soldiers. It was simply assumed that an obscure illusion to Charterhouse would be instantly recognised by readers.

At the end of the book Stendhal dedicates Charterhouse to “The Happy Few”. He knew his Shakespeare and it would seem discourteous to resist the author’s overt invitation that readers join his “band of brothers”. This is teamwork. You, dear reader, are in the book. So, dust down that edition languishing on the shelf and settle down for a journey into your present day, courtesy of an author who was a master of the intrigues of his own.