Read The Red and the Black Online
Authors: Stendhal
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #France, #Classics, #Literary, #Europe, #Juvenile Fiction, #Psychological, #Young men, #Church and state, #People & Places, #Bildungsromane, #Ambition, #Young Men - France
The Red and the Black (80 page)
EXPLANATORY NOTES
CURRENCY
| franc : basic unit of the French monetary system since 1803. |
| pound (Fr. livre ): older unit still used in Stendhal's time as the equivalent of a franc. |
| crown (Fr. écu ): silver coin of variable worth, commonly either 3 or 6 francs. |
| louis or napoléon : gold coin worth 20 francs. |
| centime : coin worth one hundredth of a franc. |
| sou : coin worth 5 centimes. |
DISTANCES
league(Fr.
lieue
): a variable measure, usually about 4 kilometres.
| 1 to the Happy Few : this dedication is in English in the original. It appears on the last page of the novel, at the end of the table of contents (printed according to French custom at the back of the book). It occurs similarly elsewhere in Stendhal's writings. He is believed to have borrowed it not so much from Shakespeare ('we few, we happy few, we band of brothers', Henry V , IV. iii) as from Goldsmith Vicar of Wakefield : 'tracts . . . read only by the happy few ' (ch. ii). |
| 2 Publisher's Note : fictitious. |
| 2 events of July : the 1830 revolution which put Louis-Philippe on the French throne in place of Charles X. |
| 2 1827 : the novel was in fact written in 1829-30. |
| 3 Danton : 1759-94, leading statesman and orator of the French Revolution (1789). Like the majority of Stendhal's epigraphs, this one appears to have been invented by him to suit his own text: only 15 of the 73 epigraphs in the novel have been traced to the works of the authors credited with them. |
| 3 Franche-Comté : one of the former provinces in eastern France, extending from Burgundy to the Swiss border (capital: Besançon). Although there are two places called Verrières in this region, Stendhal's little town bears no resemblance to either of them. Some critics have identified Dole (on the road from Besançon to Dijon) as the model for Verrières. Others point out |
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| that many of the features of the locality described by Stendhal are more reminiscent of the French Alps near Grenoble than of the Jura. |
| 3 Mulhouse tradition : production of painted fabrics had started in Mulhouse in the mid-18th c. and spread throughout the Rhine valley and surrounding mountain regions. |
| 4 orders of knighthood : visible as insignia worn on the coat. |
| 5 conquered by Louis XIV : in 1678. |
| 5 events of 1815 : final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, and Second Restoration of Louis XVIII. Under the Restoration, the new industrial ethos was championed by the liberal party, from which M. de Rênal strongly dissociates himself. |
| 5 182- elections : the general election of 1824, which consolidated the power of the Ultra-royalists. |
| 6 mindless : Stendhal's italicization is sometimes idiosyncratic, and is not always followed in this translation. |
| 7 Barnave : 1761-93, born in Grenoble; friend of Stendhal's family. Revolutionary orator in favour of constitutional monarchy. See also epigraphs to chapters I. 19, 24, 11. 31. |
| 8 Ultra : the Ultras, or pure royalists, stood for the ideals of counterrevolution and the Catholic establishment. Their leader, Villèle, was head of the Cabinet from 1822 to 1827. |
| 8 Saint-Germain-en-Laye : the château of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, département of Seine-et-Oise, was built in 1539 and served as a royal residence. It has a famous terrace by Le Nôtre ( 1613-1700). |
| 8 Jacobin : member of a revolutionary political society founded in Paris in 1790. The name derives from their meeting-place: a former 'Jacobin' (Dominican) convent. The Jacobins advocated absolute power for the people. |
| 8 Legion of Honour . founded by Napoleon in 1802 to reward civil and military exploits. The Legion of Honour cross is attached to a red ribbon. |
| 9 M. Appert : a well-known figure of the period. His campaigns for prison reform took him round prisons throughout France. |
| 11 Fleury : the Abbé Fleury ( 1640-1723) was Louis XV's confessor and author of an Ecclesiastical History . |
| 12 eight hundred pounds : for a note on currency, see p. 530. |
| 12 at the age of eighty : at the end of the 1820s, old priests educated |
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| in the Gallican, or French, tradition found themselves the victims of a wave of hostility from the younger Ultramontane clergy whose absolute allegiance was to the pope. These intrigues were particularly prevalent in the Franche-Comté. |
| 14 voted 'no' to the Empire : in the plebiscite held before Napoleon was crowned emperor in Dec. 1804, there were 3,572,329 votes in favour of the Empire, 2,569 against. |
| 14 carpenter's son : the French term charpentier denotes someone who typically prepares and assembles timber frames for use in building construction. I have translated it here by the English 'carpenter' (now archaic in this sense), in order to preserve the biblical resonance of the expression 'carpenter's son', recurrently applied to Julien. |
| 15 impressionable : this translates the French inégal which appears in the original edition. Castex corrects it to égal (even-tempered) on the grounds that inégal does not fit M me de Rênal's character. I think that this correction is not justified by close reading of the text. |
| 15 Duke of Orleans : Philippe-Egalité ( 1747-93) was a supporter of the Revolution, voted for the death of his cousin Louis XVI, and was himself executed. His son Louis-Philippe ( 1773-1850) became King of France in 1830. |
| 15 M me de Montesson : married Philippe-Egalité in secret. M me de Genlis : 1746-1830, niece of M me de Montesson and governess to the children of her marriage to Philippe-Egalité. She wrote a number of books on education. M. Ducrest : nephew of M me de Montesson and brother of M me de Genlis. He was responsible for renovating the Palais-Royal ( Paris residence of the House of Orleans) and adding its distinctive galleries. |
| 17 Machiavelli : 1469-1527. 'And will I be at fault if it is so?' |
| 17 good lady : the French expression used ( ma femme ) is not refined usage. Stendhal comments in the margin of his personal copy of the novel that M. de R. does not refer to his wife as 'M me de Rênal' (in upper-class tradition). |
| 17 abbé : a term originally denoting an abbot in the Catholic Church, but later extended to anyone wearing ecclesiastical dress, whether or not he had been ordained as a priest. Abbés without ecclesiastical duties were frequently employed as private tutors. They wore either a black suit with frock-coat, or a cassock (hence M. de Rênal's uncertainty about Julien's dress). |
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| 19 St Helena Chronicle : the Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène ( 1823) was compiled by the Comte de Las Cases, Napoleon's secretary, who accompanied him to St Helena and kept a record of their conversations. |
| 21 Ennius : 239-169 Bc. [Unus homo nobis] cunctando restituis rem : 'By delaying he [one man] saved the republic [for us].' Reference to Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator, who ultimately defeated Hannibal by never offering him pitched battle. |
| 22 Rousseau : 1712-78, French Enlightenment philosopher and writer. His major works include La Nouvelle Héloèse ( 1761), an epistolary novel; the Contrat Social ( 1762), a treatise on political philosophy; and his Confessions (posthumous), a sentimental, selfjustificatory autobiography. |
| 22 On the Pope : Joseph de Maistre ( 1753-1821) was an opponent of the Revolution and a staunch defender of the monarchy and the pope. His book was widely read by the young guard of Ultramontane priests. |
| 24 thiry-six francs : so that the monthly wage could be paid in everyday écu coins, each worth 3 or 6 francs. |
| 25 make a Station : perform the requisite devotions in front of one of the fourteen images representing successive incidents in Christ's Passion. |
| 25 Lodi bridge, Arcola and Rivoli : victories by Napoleon over the Austrians; the first two in 1796, the latter in 1797. |
| 25 Congregation : name given by Stendhal's contemporaries to the Association des Chevaliers de la Foi ('Association of Knights of the Faith'), a Jesuit-inspired secret society whose true identity or even existence was unknown to the general public. It had a network across France, and was deeply involved in reactionary politics. The term congrégation was also used to refer to the pious associations officially established by the Concordat of 1801 and dedicated to charitable works, particularly the Congrégation de la Vierge and its various affiliates. Since the secret Congregation found it expedient to shelter behind the activities of the latter, and membership was in many instances overlapping, it is not surprising that the general public often grouped all these bodies together indiscriminately under the one term congrégation . |
| 25 Le Constitutionnel : founded in 1815, it favoured constitutional monarchy and became the mouthpiece of the liberal opposition. |
| 26 M me de Beauharnais : 1763-1814, the future Empress Josephine. |
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| She was first married to the Vicomte de Beauharnais, who was executed in 1794. She then married General Bonaparte in 1796. They were divorced in 1809. |
| 29 Mozart (Figaro) : 'I no longer know what I am, or what I'm doing.' |
| 36 sub-prefect : official representing central government at the level of the district (arrondissement). The prefect heads a departement (see n. to p. 106 below). |
| 37 Elective Affinities : the title of a novel by Goethe ( 1908), dealing with the attractions of a married couple for two other people. |
| 37 feast of St Louis : 25 Aug. |
| 41 Théâtre de Madame : vaudeville theatre in Paris built in 1820. |
| 41 Aveyron : département in S.W. France at the southern end of the Massif Central. |
| 42 the late Prince de Condé : Louis-Joseph, Prince de Condé ( 1736-1818), organized a counter-revolutionary army in 1792. |
| 43 Besenval's Memoirs : published in 1805-6, they give a detailed picture of pre-revolutionary France. |
| 44 de visu : 'by sight' (Latin). |
| 44 La Quotidienne : Ultra-royalist newspaper founded in 1792. |
| 44 Jacobin : see n. to p. 8. |
| 45 mezzo-termine : 'compromise' (Italian). |
| 48 Don Juan : Don Juan , the poem by Byron ( 1788-1824), appeared in 1819. |
| 50 leagues : for distances, see p. 530. |
| 52 Gabrielle : the legend of the Châtelaine de Vergy exists in numerous versions. In the original 13th-c. French verse romance, as also in the tale in the Heptameron by Marguerite de Navarre ( 1492-1549), the lady dies of grief, believing in error that her lover has disclosed their love to another woman; whereupon the lover kills himself. Later versions are more gruesome: the lover perishes first, and the jealous husband serves up his heart to the lady at dinner. Realizing what she has eaten, she starves herself to death. In 1804 Stendhal had seen a stage adaptation of the story, Gabrielle de Vergy by Dormont de Belloy (first performed in 1777). A modern French version of the 13th-c. legend was published in 1829. The real village of Vergy is not in the FrancheComté but in Burgundy, near Dijon. |
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| 52 Tuileries : the Palais des Tuileries, begun in 1564, was the Paris residence of the French monarchy. It was partially burned down by the Commune in 1871, and finally destroyed in 1882. Only parts of the gardens remain. |
| 53 M. Godart's excellent study : Jean-Baptiste Godart, Histoire Naturelle des lépidoptères en France . The work was unfinished when the author died in 1823. |
| 56 Strombeck : the Baron de Strombeck was a personal friend of Stendhal's. Guérin ( 1774-1833) exhibited his painting of Dido and Aeneas at the Salon of 1817. It depicts Dido listening to Aeneas in the presence of her sister. |
| 58 Charles the Bold : 1433-77, Duke of Burgundy from 1467. |
| 60 the Robespierres of this world : Robespierre ( 1758-94) was a key figure in the French Revolution. He instigated the Terror in 1793, and met his own death on the scaffold. |
| 66 More than fifty crowns : 56 écus worth 3 francs each would represent the extra sum of 168 francs offered by M. de Rênal. |
| 73 Sieyès : 1748-1836, churchman and politician; author of a famous pamphlet on the Tiers Etat ( 1789), and one of the organizers of Napoleon's coup d'état of Nov. 1799. |
| 77 Pontarlier : town close to the Swiss border on the road from Neuchâtel to Dijon. |
| 80 Saint-Réal: Abbé de Saint-Réal ( 1639-92), French historian. The ascription to him of this key aesthetic formulation is false, and critics have seen in it a pun on the name Saint-Réal: a founding father of the doctrine of realism, or the 'Holy Real'. |
| 85 Polidori : Byron's doctor and secretary. Stendhal met them both in Milan in 1816. |
| 87 Corneille : 'L'amour / Fait les égalités et ne les cherche pas .' These lines are attributed by Stendhal to Corneille ( 1606-84), but they in fact come from Venceslas , a play by Rotrou ( 1609-50). |
| 89 Love's Blazon : in literal translation this medieval verse reads: Love in Latin gives amor; |
| 94 provincial saying: fictitious? |
| 99 Robespierre : see n. to p. 60. |
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