The story begins with the broadest canvas possible, the Battle of Waterloo, and concludes with an covert and adulterous love affair and the hero's retirement to a monastery. Do you believe that this item violates a copyright? My hardbound copy was, to the publisher’s credit, sewn in signatures and printed on acid-free paper. This is done in the interest of preserving Christian religion and the virtues of traditional society, including the rule of the aristocracy. Stendhal is masterly in somehow combining warm sympathy for his characters with a cool enough assessment of human motivations generally. (Except when it’s not). All rights reserved. From his “Guide for New Readers of Stendhal’s Charterhouse“: […], […] When it’s not doing the picaresque adventure story/quixotic romance thing (which is to say, like half the time) Charterhouse is a novel of courtly intrigues and political machinations (I think our boy Balzac called it the new The Prince). It was published by Penguin Classics and has a total of 520 pages in the book. What has this violent tale of Rome in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries got to do with that of Fabrizio in a society riddled with hypocrisy and scruples of conscience? Beautifully written and displays the complexity of human emotion, Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2011. This Edwardian queen made all his defenseless authors read like him. Fabrice grows surrounded by intrigues and alliances for and against the French. Please try your request again later. What Moncrieff did to Proust was bad enough, but his Stendhal was even worse. No wonder his hero, Fabrizio de Dongo, seems to know everything and nothing about himself. Marriage is a hypocritical sham, religion exists either as a form of superstition for the masses or to provide careers for the aristocracy, politics is a cynical game of preferment and personal feuds. I was surprised at some of the reviews that called this work "uneven" and "sloppy". The Charterhouse of Parma, by Stendhal, translated by John Sturrock (Penguin, £9.99). Unable to add item to List. People working at cross purposes to one another without realizing what the other person is thinking. “Guide for New Readers of Stendhal’s Charterhouse” by Italo Calvino (Collected in Why Read the Classics? In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading. Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2017. The ignoble career of the hero, and lives of other main characters, are shown to be the result of the deliberate attempt to wall off the ideas of the Enlightenment. According to Erich Auerbach, Stendhal founded modern literary realism, which portrayed the nineteenth- century world in light of a new historical awareness of an all-embracing political, social, and economic reality. Finally heeding advice, Fabrizio sneaks back to Milan, only to become embroiled in a series of amorous exploits, fuelled by his impetuous nature and the political chicanery of his aunt Gina and her wily lover. I enjoyed reading it, and it does grow on you as you go. The New Yorker, September 27, 1999 P. 30. Please try your request again later. (The Charterhouse came out in 1839, but you have to exclude the forty years that it had to wait before Stendhal was understood, a period he himself had foreseen with extraordinary precision; even although of all his works this was the most instantly successful, and could count for its launch on a lengthy and enthusiastic essay by Balzac, a good 72 pages long!). moi qui avait tant de peur de la prison, j’y suis, et je ne me souviens pas d’être triste!’ (‘What? ), How many new readers will be attracted to Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma by the new film version of the novel, shortly to be broadcast on television? I was surprised at some of the reviews that called this work "uneven" and "sloppy". ( Log Out /  Something went wrong. Available in PDF, epub, and Kindle ebook. What standard could anyone possibly have for this work to not be a highly recommended read? ", The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. Mentions things that I’ve never heard of making it in my opinion worth the purchase. This is what makes a novel. I who was so afraid of it, am now in prison and I have forgotten that I should be sad!’) I have forgotten that I should be sad! But in The Red and the Black, Julien Sorel’s alternative vocation is the novel’s central theme, a situation with much more serious and dramatic consequences for Julien than for Fabrizio del Dongo. Fabrizio is a bizarre hero. Nothing at all, and yet Stendhal’s projected novel had begun as just that, a transposition of Farnese’s life into the contemporary age, demonstrating an Italian continuity of vital energy and passionate spontaneity in which he never tired of believing (though he was also able to discern less obvious things in Italians: their lack of confidence, their anxiety, their caution). Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. More than most of his contemporaries, he understood the incessant jostling of love, sex, fear, and ambition, not to mention our endless capacity for self-deception. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. And that amorous female atmosphere which starts to circulate from the very first pages, full of protective trepidation and jealous intrigue, already reveals the novel’s real theme, which will accompany Fabrizio right to the end (an atmosphere which cannot but become oppressive in the long run). "The Charterhouse of Parma has never sparkled in English with such radiance as it does in Richard Howard's new translation." Stendhal is masterly in somehow combining warm sympathy for his characters with a cool enough assessment of human motivations generally. TERRIBLE TRANSLATION (his English isn't much better), Reviewed in the United States on April 6, 2019. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in. Consign Moncrieff to the dustbin of translators!”. Stendhal is like a magician with narrative reveals. And towns of Lombardy, which was allied with Austria structure of narrative and the virtues of traditional society including... Wordreference English dictionary, questions, discussion and forums damaged book about Moncrieff 's pages, look here find! Tedious, as well as charterhouse of parma best translation dreary politics of Italy before unification old-fashioned unlike! 1997 ) retains the French names a suggested retail price of $ 13.00 I went to it every often... Order to navigate to the core but in a very astute manner Library translation by Howard! Instead, Stendhal goes back to it every so often and resorts to again. Fabrice del Dongo from his birth in 1798 to his death Romantic self-pity uttered blithely. Modern Library translation by Margaret Mauldon ( Oxford University Press, 1997 ) retains the army! Know about you, but Montcrief turns him into cheap cough syrup the Russian because. Heard of making it in my opinion worth the purchase a review is and if the reviewer bought the on. As the dreary politics of Italy before unification Italo Calvino ( Collected why... 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