Stendhal took his pen name from a small German town — and to this day no one knows why that town in particular. His novels are about people who go looking for happiness and cannot hold on to it.
He was born in Grenoble in 1783 as Marie-Henri Beyle. A Napoleonic officer: Italy, Russia, the retreat from Moscow. Then Milan, Rome, the consular service.
The Red and the Black (1830): Julien Sorel, a carpenter's son, wants to rise in a world where the red (the army, Napoleon) no longer works and the black (the Church) is the only way up. The Charterhouse of Parma (1839): written in seven weeks.
"I write for a hundred readers," he said — and predicted he would be read a hundred years on. He died of a stroke in 1842.
A voice in the arc — one law of history, in figures. More of the 19th century: the whole age at once →
The arc · The 21 stations · The grammar of history · The seven idols and all 53 collapses · The books · All the figures · Who makes this · Russian version
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