Editing Stendhal (section)

==Life==<!--many paragraphs have no citations-->
Marie-Henri Beyle was born in Grenoble, Isère, on 23 January 1783, into the family of the advocate and landowner Chérubin Beyle and his wife Henriette Gagnon. He was an unhappy child, disliking his "unimaginative" father and mourning his mother, whom he loved fervently, and who died in childbirth in 1790, when he was seven.<ref name="Nemo">{{Cite book|last=Nemo|first=August|title=Essential Novelists - Stendhal: modern consciousness of reality|publisher=Tacet Books|year=2020|isbn=978-3-96799-211-3|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4209|title=Literary Encyclopedia – Stendhal|publisher=litencyc.com}}</ref> He spent his childhood at the Beyle country house in [[Claix, Isère|Claix]] near Grenoble. His closest friend was his younger sister, Pauline, with whom he maintained a steady correspondence throughout the first decade of the 19th century. His family was part of the bourgeois class of the [[Ancien Régime|Ancien Regime]], which explains his ambiguous attitude toward [[Napoleon]], [[Bourbon Restoration in France|the Bourbon Restoration]], and the monarchy later&nbsp;on.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Brombert|first=Victor|title=Stendhal: Fiction and the Themes of Freedom|publisher=University of Chicago Press|year=2018|isbn=978-0-226-53829-7|location=Chicago|pages=11|language=en}}</ref>

[[File:Casa di Stendhal.JPG|thumb|upright|A plaque on a house in [[Vilnius]] where Stendhal stayed in December 1812 during [[Napoleon]]'s retreat from Russia.]]
The military and theatrical worlds of the [[First French Empire]] were a revelation to Beyle. As an assistant war commissioner, he served in the administration of the [[Kingdom of Westphalia]], one of Napoleon's client states in Germany. From 1807 to 1808, Beyle lived in [[Braunschweig]] (Brunswick), where he fell in love with Wilhelmine von Griesheim, whom he called Minette, and for whose sake he remained in the city. "I have no inclination, now, except for Minette, for this blonde and charming Minette, this soul of the north, such as I have never seen in France or Italy."<ref name=JR68>{{cite book| first= Joanna |last= Richardson |title= Stendhal| publisher= Coward, McCann & Geoghegan |year= 1974| page= 68}}</ref>

He was named an [[auditor]] with the [[Council of State (France)|Conseil d'État]] on 3 August 1810, and thereafter took part in the French administration and in the [[Napoleonic wars]] in Italy. He travelled extensively in Germany and was part of [[Napoleon]]'s army in the 1812 invasion of Russia.{{sfn|Talty|2009|loc=p. 228 "...the novelist Stendhal, an officer in the commissariat, who was still among the luckiest men on the retreat, having preserved his carriage."}} Upon arriving, Stendhal witnessed the burning of Moscow from just outside the city as well as the army's winter retreat.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Haig|first=Stirling|title=Stendhal: The Red and the Black|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1989|isbn=0-521-34189-2|location=Cambridge|pages=9|language=en}}</ref> He was appointed Commissioner of War Supplies and sent to [[Smolensk]] to prepare provisions for the returning army.<ref name="Nemo" /> He crossed the [[Battle of Berezina|Berezina River]] by finding a usable ford rather than the overwhelmed pontoon bridge, which probably saved his life and those of his companions.  He arrived in Paris in 1813, largely unaware of the general fiasco that the retreat had become.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Markham |first=J. David  |date=April 1997 |title=Following in the Footsteps of Glory: Stendhal's Napoleonic Career |url=http://www.napoleon-series.org/ins/scholarship97/c_stendhal.html |journal=Napoleonic Scholarship: The Journal of the International Napoleonic Society |volume=1 |issue=1  |access-date=July 22, 2015}}</ref> Stendhal became known, during the Russian campaign, for keeping his wits about him, and maintaining his "sang-froid and clear-headedness." He also maintained his daily routine, shaving each day during the retreat from Moscow.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Sartre |first=Jean-Paul |date=September–October 2009 |title=War Diary |url=http://newleftreview.org/II/59/jean-paul-sartre-war-diary|journal=New Left Review |issue=59  |pages=88–120 |access-date=July 22, 2015}}</ref>

After the 1814 [[Treaty of Fontainebleau (1814)|Treaty of Fontainebleau]], and the fall of Napoleon, he left for Italy, where he settled in [[Milan]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Bamforth|first=Iain|date=2010-12-01|title=Stendhal's Syndrome|journal=The British Journal of General Practice|volume=60|issue=581|pages=945–946|doi=10.3399/bjgp10X544780|issn=0960-1643|pmc=2991758}}</ref> where he stayed until 1821; "...only leaving after these, the happiest, years of his life, through fear of being implicated in the Carbonari troubles."<ref name="Sidney Woolf">{{cite book |last1=Stendhal |editor1-last=Sidney Woolf |editor1-first=Philip |editor2-last=Sidney Woolf |editor2-first=Cecil N. |editor1-link=Introductory Preface to the Translation |title=On Love |date=1915 |publisher=The Mayflower Press |location=Plymouth |page=xii |edition=Second |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/53720/53720-h/53720-h.htm |access-date=27 January 2025 |quote=only leaving after these, the happiest, years of his life}}</ref> In 1830, he was appointed as French [[Consulate general|consul]] at Trieste and Civitavecchia.<ref name="NYTimes">{{Cite book|last=Times|first=The New York|title=The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge: A Desk Reference for the Curious Mind|publisher=St. Martin's Publishing Group|year=2011|isbn=978-0-312-64302-7|location=New York|pages=1334|language=en}}</ref> He formed a particular attachment to Italy, where he spent much of the remainder of his career. His novel ''[[The Charterhouse of Parma]]'', written in 52 days, is set in Italy, which he considered a more sincere and passionate country than Restoration France. An aside in that novel, referring to a character who contemplates suicide after being jilted, speaks about his attitude towards his home country: "To make this course of action clear to my French readers, I must explain that in Italy, a country very far away from us, people are still driven to despair by love."

Stendhal identified with the nascent [[liberalism]] and his sojourn in Italy convinced him that [[Romanticism]] was essentially the literary counterpart of liberalism in politics.{{sfn|Green|2011|p=158}} When Stendhal was appointed to a consular post in Trieste in 1830, [[Metternich]] refused his ''[[exequatur]]'' on account of Stendhal's liberalism and anti-clericalism.{{sfn|Green|2011|p=239}}

[[File:Liste des femmes aimées par Stendhal.jpg|thumb|left|List of the women that he had loved, inserted in ''Life of Henry Brulard'', in 1835: "I dreamed deeply of these names, and of the astonishing stupidities and stupidities they did to me." (From left to right: Virginie Kubly, Angela Pietragrua, Adèle Rebuffel, Mina de Griesheim, Mélanie Guilbert, Angelina Bereyter, Alexandrine Daru, Angela Pietragrua,{{efn|Angela Pietragrua is cited twice: during their first meeting in 1800; and when he fell in love with her in 1811.}} Matilde Dembowski, Clémentine Curial, Giulia Rinieri, Madame Azur-Alberthe de Rubempré)]]

Stendhal was a dandy and wit about town in Paris, as well as an obsessive womaniser.<ref>{{Cite book|last=LaPointe|first=Leonard L.|title=Paul Broca and the Origins of Language in the Brain|publisher=Plural Publishing|year=2012|isbn=978-1-59756-604-9|location=San Diego, CA|pages=135|language=en}}</ref> His genuine empathy towards women is evident in his books; [[Simone de Beauvoir]] spoke highly of him in ''[[The Second Sex]]''.<ref name="Leighton">{{Cite book|last=Leighton|first=Jean|title=Simone de Beauvoir on Woman|publisher=Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press|year=1975|isbn=978-0-8386-1504-1|pages=218|language=en}}</ref> She credited him for perceiving a woman as just a woman and simply a human being.<ref name="Leighton" /><ref>{{Cite book|last=Rass|first=Rebecca|title=Study Guide to The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir|publisher=Influence Publishers|year=2020|isbn=978-1-64542-393-5|location=Nashville|language=en}}</ref> Citing Stendhal's rebellious heroines, she maintained that he was a feminist writer.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Pearson|first=Roger|title=Stendhal: The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma|publisher=Routledge|year=2014|isbn=978-0-582-09616-5|location=Oxon|pages=261|language=en}}</ref> One of his early works is ''On Love'', a rational analysis of romantic passion that was based on his [[unrequited love]] for Mathilde, Countess Dembowska,<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Fortnightly Review|date=1913|publisher=Chapman and Hall|location=Suffolk|pages=74|language=en}}</ref> whom he met while living at [[Milan]]. Later, he would also suffer "restlessness in spirit" when one of his childhood friends, Victorine got married. In a letter to Pauline, he described her as the woman of his dreams and wrote that he would have discovered happiness if he became her husband.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Green|first=F. C.|title=An Amharic Reader|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1939|isbn=978-1-107-60072-0|location=Cambridge|pages=75|language=en}}</ref> This fusion of, and tension between, clear-headed analysis and romantic feeling is typical of Stendhal's great novels; he could be considered a Romantic realist.

Stendhal suffered miserable physical disabilities in his final years as he continued to produce some of his most famous work. He contracted [[syphilis]] in December 1808.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|last=Green|first=F. C.|title=Stendhal|publisher=CUP Archive|year=1939|location=Cambridge|pages=67|language=en}}</ref> As he noted in his journal, he was taking iodide of [[potassium]] and [[Mercury (element)|quicksilver]] to treat his sexual disease, resulting in swollen armpits, difficulty swallowing, pains in his shrunken testicles, sleeplessness, giddiness, roaring in the ears, racing pulse and "tremors so bad he could scarcely hold a fork or a pen". Modern medicine has shown that his health problems were more attributable to his treatment than to his syphilis. He is said to have sought the best treatment in Paris, Vienna and Rome.<ref name=":0" />

Stendhal died on 23 March 1842, a few hours after collapsing with a seizure in the street in Paris. He is interred in the [[Cimetière de Montmartre]].