Editing Stendhal (section)

==Critical appraisal==
[[Hippolyte Taine]] considered the psychological portraits of Stendhal's characters to be "real, because they are complex, many-sided, particular and original, like living human beings." [[Émile Zola]] concurred with Taine's assessment of Stendhal's skills as a "psychologist", and although emphatic in his praise of Stendhal's psychological accuracy and rejection of convention, he deplored the various implausibilities of the novels and Stendhal's clear authorial intervention.<ref>{{cite book |last=Pearson |first=Roger |date=2014 |title=Stendhal: "The Red and the Black" and "The Charterhouse of Parma" |publisher=Routledge|page=6 |isbn=978-0582096165}}</ref>

The German philosopher [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] refers to Stendhal as "France's last great psychologist" in ''[[Beyond Good and Evil]]'' (1886).{{sfn|Nietzsche|1973|p=187}} He also mentions Stendhal in the ''[[Twilight of the Idols]]'' (1889) during a discussion of Dostoevsky as a psychologist, saying that encountering [[Dostoevsky]] was "the most beautiful accident of my life, more so than even my discovery of Stendhal".{{sfn|Nietzsche|2004|p=46}}

[[Ford Madox Ford]], in ''The English Novel'', asserts that to [[Denis Diderot|Diderot]] and Stendhal "the Novel owes its next great step forward...At that point it became suddenly evident that the Novel as such was capable of being regarded as a means of profoundly serious and many-sided discussion and therefore as a medium of profoundly serious investigation into the human case."<ref>{{cite book| first= James| last= Wood| title= How Fiction Works| publisher= Macmillan| year= 2008| page= [https://archive.org/details/howfictionworks00wood/page/165 165]| isbn= 9780374173401|url=https://archive.org/details/howfictionworks00wood/page/165}}</ref>

[[Erich Auerbach]] considers modern "serious realism" to have begun with Stendhal and [[Honoré de Balzac|Balzac]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Wood |first=Michael |date=March 5, 2015|title=What is concrete? |url=http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n05/michael-wood/what-is-concrete |journal=[[The London Review of Books]] |volume=37 |issue=5 |pages=19–21 |access-date=July 24, 2015}}</ref> In ''[[Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature|Mimesis]]'', he remarks of a scene in ''The Red and the Black'' that "it would be almost incomprehensible without a most accurate and detailed knowledge of the political situation, the social stratification, and the economic circumstances of a perfectly definite historical moment, namely, that in which France found itself just before the July Revolution."<ref name=A454>{{cite book |last=Auerbach |first=Erich |date=May 2003 |title=Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature |location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton University Press |pages=[https://archive.org/details/mimesisrepresent00auer_0/page/454 454–464] |isbn=069111336X |url=https://archive.org/details/mimesisrepresent00auer_0/page/454 }}</ref>

In Auerbach's view, in Stendhal's novels "characters, attitudes, and relationships of the ''[[dramatis personæ]]'', then, are very closely connected with contemporary historical circumstances; contemporary political and social conditions are woven into the action in a manner more detailed and more real than had been exhibited in any earlier novel, and indeed in any works of literary art except those expressly purporting to be politico-satirical tracts."<ref name=A454 />

[[Simone de Beauvoir]] uses Stendhal as an example of a feminist author. In ''[[The Second Sex]]'' de Beauvoir writes "Stendhal never describes his heroines as a function of his heroes: he provides them with their own destinies."<ref name="The Second Sex">{{cite book |last1=De Beauvoir |first1=Simone |title=The Second Sex |date=1997 |publisher=Vintage |location=London |isbn=9780099744214}}</ref> She furthermore points out that it "is remarkable that Stendhal is both so profoundly romantic and so decidedly feminist; feminists are usually rational minds that adopt a universal point of view in all things; but it is not only in the name of freedom in general but also in the name of individual happiness that Stendhal calls for women's emancipation."<ref name="The Second Sex"/> Yet, Beauvoir criticises Stendhal for, although wanting a woman to be his equal, her only destiny he envisions for her remains a man.<ref name="The Second Sex"/>

Even Stendhal's autobiographical works, such as ''The Life of Henry Brulard'' or ''Memoirs of an Egotist'', are "far more closely, essentially, and concretely connected with the politics, sociology, and economics of the period than are, for example, the corresponding works of [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Rousseau]] or [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|Goethe]]; one feels that the great events of contemporary history affected Stendhal much more directly than they did the other two; Rousseau did not live to see them, and Goethe had managed to keep aloof from them." Auerbach goes on to say: 
{{blockquote| We may ask ourselves how it came about that modern consciousness of reality began to find literary form for the first time precisely in Henri Beyle of Grenoble. Beyle-Stendhal was a man of keen intelligence, quick and alive, mentally independent and courageous, but not quite a great figure. His ideas are often forceful and inspired, but they are erratic, arbitrarily advanced, and, despite all their show of boldness, lacking in inward certainty and continuity. There is something unsettled about his whole nature: his fluctuation between realistic candor in general and silly mystification in particulars, between cold self-control, rapturous abandonment to sensual pleasures, and insecure and sometimes sentimental vaingloriousness, is not always easy to put up with; his literary style is very impressive and unmistakably original, but it is short-winded, not uniformly successful, and only seldom wholly takes possession of and fixes the subject. But, such as he was, he offered himself to the moment; circumstances seized him, tossed him about, and laid upon him a unique and unexpected destiny; they formed him so that he was compelled to come to terms with reality in a way which no one had done before him.<ref name=A454 />}}

[[Vladimir Nabokov]] was dismissive of Stendhal, in ''[[Strong Opinions]]'' calling him "that pet of all those who like their French plain". In the notes to his translation of ''[[Eugene Onegin]]'', he asserts that ''Le Rouge et le Noir'' is "much overrated", and that Stendhal has a "paltry style". In ''[[Pnin (novel)|Pnin]]'' Nabokov wrote satirically, "Literary departments still labored under the impression that Stendhal, [[John Galsworthy|Galsworthy]], [[Theodore Dreiser|Dreiser]], and [[Thomas Mann|Mann]] were great writers."<ref>{{cite magazine |url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1965/jul/15/the-strange-case-of-pushkin-and-nabokov/ |title=The Strange Case of Pushkin and Nabokov |last1=Wilson |first1=Edmund |date=July 15, 1965 |website=nybooks.com |publisher=[[The New York Review of Books]] |access-date=July 24, 2015}}</ref>

[[Michael Dirda]] considers Stendhal "the greatest all round French writer – author of two of the top 20 French novels, author of a highly original autobiography (''Vie de Henry Brulard''), a superb travel writer, and as inimitable a presence on the page as any writer you'll ever meet."<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2005/05/26/DI2005052601132.html |title= Dirda on Books |last1=Dirda |first1=Michael |date=June 1, 2005 |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |access-date=July 24, 2015}}</ref>