Inspired by seeing a sign in Stendhal’s honour in Trieste, I decided to get to grips with the writer’s other classic novel, having read Le Rouge et le Noir so long ago that I cannot really claim to remember it, beyond a vague sensation of being in the presence of a writer who was managing the complexity of moral behaviour in a manner that seemed exceedingly modern. This quality is also at work in The Charterhouse of Parma, whose main characters, Fabrizio and his aunt, appear to exist according to a moral code that is driven as much by exigency as any kind of deeply held set of values. Of course, this has the effect of making them feel incontrovertibly human, which is one of the art of the novel’s greatest facets. Investigating behaviour over the course of a protracted timeline, as is the case with writers such as Eliot and Hardy allows the writer to dig beneath a heroic surface in order to excavate the viscera that drives our actions. Having said all of this, and having beautifully set up Fabrizio as a flawed hero in the description of his participation of the battle of Waterloo, Stendhal’s novel does have a tendency to go around the houses. The sub-plots relating to the court at Parma seem infinitesimal, and the reader yearns for the flawed hero to return and take up centre stage. The writer’s analysis of the experience of amorous love is beautifully nuanced, and reminded this jaded reader of the vicissitudes of uneasy passions.
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