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Dec 02, 2007

Quinn rated it:

It's a book about the dangers of reading. The novel's characters are seduced by ideas, poetic gestures, tragic endings, narratives they might inhabit and soon find themselves enslaved to them, marching lockstep in the footprints of characters whose stories they've read. Stendhal obviously takes pleasure in his position as most recent seducer of the book's reader and he sugar-coats his narrative pills just enough that it's only later, with the feeling of slight corrosion in your stomach, that y More...

3 comments like (16 people liked it)

Mar 09, 2011

Mariel rated it:

Ultimately, Stendhal's The Red and the Black almost pissed me off. If I see this book again I'm tempted to say to it, "I'm not rationally sure why you kinda pissed me off. I just know you did!" It really would have if I had cared enough about any of the people in it to be pissed off. I hate that feeling of self persuasion as inevitable, as people being trapped in mind games. It sucks but I cannot swallow the idea that there is no other outcome. I know it's satire. I kinda hate satire. More...

2 comments like (13 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

David rated it:

If nothing else, read Moncrieff's translation to seep yourself in the highly latinate, generally overeducated and comfortably contorted prose ('But the adroitness with the want of which we are reproaching him would have debarred the sublime impulse of seizing the sword which, at that moment, made him appear so handsome in the eyes of Mademoiselle de La Mole') -- it will do wonders for the style of your work emails. Trust me on this one.

What to say about Stendhal? I think he exists ha More...

1 comment like (11 people liked it)

Dec 08, 2008

Tony rated it:

Lessons learned: don't sleep with other people's wives, and don't fuck with the class system. Stendhal manages to conflate the two rather elegantly in the social maneuverings of the novel's hero, Julien Sorel. His romantic intrigues are immediately political as well as sensual, encapsulating a good deal of the contemporaneous upheavals in French government, as well as addressing more universal aspects of social tension and class psychology and, of course, the eternal divergence of love and lust. More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Aug 25, 2010

Manny rated it:

I was taking the train from Geneva to Grenoble, one of the most beautiful routes in the world, and I was reading Le Rouge et le Noir for the second time. I hadn't picked the book because I was visiting Grenoble, it just worked out that way. I was alone in the compartment; it was one of those old-fashioned carriages which still had compartments.

At the fifth or sixth stop, the door opened, and a young woman entered carrying a lot of heavy luggage. She asked me, in French, if I'd mind h More...

5 comments like (16 people liked it)

Nov 18, 2010

Alex rated it:

"My loathing for being disdained, which I thought I could control till the moment of my death, now obliges me to speak. Gentlemen, I do not have the honor of belonging to your class. What you see in me is a peasant, in revolt against the barrenness of his fate."

"Only a fool," he (Julien) said to himself, "gets angry at others. A stone falls because it's heavy. Am I going to be forever a child? When will I acquire the good habit of giving these people my soul, o More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 25, 2011

Frankie rated it:

In many ways, this book seems to have been a precursor to Flaubert's A Sentimental Education. Though its full title The Red and The Black: A Chronicle of the Nineteenth Century shows us the significance of the Restoration period to the background of the novel. The title also reflects the contrasts that are so well developed. Most literally, red and black refers to the difference in uniform between military and clergy in France. Basic analogies also float to the surface: wealth/poverty, nobility/ More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 08, 2007

Núria rated it:

Hi ha llibres, com 'El roig i el negre', que sembla que van ser escrits ahir. T'atrapen des del principi i, tot i tenir 797 pàgines, els devores amb pocs dies i encara lamentes que s'hagi acabat tan aviat. Costa de creure que un escriptor francès de la primera meitat del segle XIX, sigui capaç d'escriure amb un estil tan directe, senzill i essencial. Costa de creure que Stendhal ja sabés perfectament que a la hora d'escriure bé les floritures sobren, i l'important és descriure amb els mínims cir More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 03, 2008

Andrew added it

If you're looking for an easy read, this isn't the place to start. It's dense, turgid, and sometimes kinda boring. But it's also moving, with currents of irony and self-awareness, and an all-around understanding of love both in a touching, Casablanca way and in a rather funny teenage-melodrama way. Like Flaubert, Stendhal bridges the romantics and realists, although I think he does it better. Problem is I really don't like romantic fiction very much. And this first foray into the tumultuous More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jan 27, 2008

anne rated it:

Why didn't I read this sooner? The protagonist Julien is a complicated and contradictory character, but to me seemed so much more alive than, for instance, his pessimistic equivalent in War and Peace, Prince Andre. His ambition and passion are always at odds, and although he's intelligent his vanity and romanticism lead him to act as if he were completely naive. What I like is that we're allowed to see all of his really ugly character traits, some of which are scarily relatable.

It's More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2012

Jamie rated it:

Oddly enough, I think most of the fault I found with it was the translation (Margaret Shaw's "Scarlet and Black" by Penguin, 1953); I was two chapters from the end when I found another copy I had stowed away, and in those two chapters felt more for the characters than I had the whole of the other book. Otherwise my comments were this: Julien is an asshole. Now I'm reading it again, and he's still an asshole, but at least a more fleshed out, less ingratiating one. Stendhal knew what More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 21, 2008

Jasmine Star rated it:

I'm not sure what to say about this book...it was incredibly interesting to read, but some of the details I found mundane. I kept thinking of how much more interesting it would be in French. I love the end of the book and all of the surprised that you never see coming! The characters are petty and I feel like the book is written to enforce their petty bourgeois attitudes, which is an interesting approach. It left me on a bit of a flat note, although I'm sure other people will find it ironically More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 12, 2011

Luciano rated it:

Finito il tempo dell’eroismo, non rimane che la sua rappresentazione.
Vi sono, si sa, persone che nascono postume, ed altre che… Come si chiamano le persone che nascono prima di qualcosa? Julien, l’antieroe del romanzo di Stendhal Le Rouge et le Noir appartiene comunque alla prima categoria - e quel “dopo” è naturalmente il ”terribile corso”...
Il titolo criptico dell’adorabile milanese nato oltralpe, pare dividere in due il mondo - ma quella “e” al posto di una “o”… - lasciandoci solamente imm More...

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Nov 24, 2011

Ensiform rated it:

The 1926 translation by C.K. Scott Moncrieff. This long, realist, romanticist novel worked on so many layers I don’t quite know what to make of it. There’s a lot of irony in this tale of Julien Sorel, a peasant’s son who works his way up the world until he is transformed by it despite himself; but what Stendhal is saying in earnest and what is ironic I find hard to discern. At different points, he attacks the hypocrisy of the Church; the very idea of a vengeful, Old Testament God; the tyranny More...

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Nov 13, 2011

MJ rated it:

I promised myself I wouldn’t spend too long clacking out a review of this one: usually, after a frenzied Sunday of reading I like to mellow out for the last few hours, and not dissertate (apparently that’s a word!) on a lofty French classic. Plus there are a few tip-top reviews already, like this one and this one and this one, so who cares what the anaemic Scot has to say? Really? In short: loved the epigrams, didn’t mind the frequent blurring of narrator with interior narration and dialogue, an More...

3 comments like (4 people liked it)

Oct 21, 2011

Roberta rated it:

Napoleone e la Restaurazione

E' la violenta impressione del brutto sopra un'anima fatta per amare ciò che è bello
Il romanzo Il rosso e il nero si svolge intorno al personaggio di Julien Sorel. Figlio di un semplice falegname, fin dall'infanzia Julien si sente portato a una vita più cerebrale di quella dei suoi familiari.
Un primo amore nei confronti di Napoleone e dell'ideale che egli rappresentava (di vita sempre in movimento, di possibilità per l'audace di farsi strada) viene More...

0 comments like

Oct 12, 2011

Denisochkin rated it:

Никогда, никогда и ни при каких обстоятельствах не читайте книги в сокращении! Воспоминания об основной линии сюжета, раскрытого в школьной христоматии, немного подпортили мне чтение. Постоянное, тягостное ощущение напрасности, безысходности жизни главного героя - вовсе не то чувство, которое хочется испытывать во время погружения в мир книги.

За Жюльена я очень переживал. В основном были понятны его столь чуждые нашему времени рассуждения о чести, лицемерии, религии, благопристойности More...

0 comments like

Nov 18, 2010

Patrick rated it:

Among French novelists Stendhal's reputation seems to fall short Hugo, Balzac, Flaubert or even Dumas. Nevertheless Stendhal stands quite on his own; his prose offers unsuspecting readers a surprisingly modern voice and his psychological insights are unrivaled. But, ah—the sweet murmurings of Julien Sorel's soul. A character so deep and written so introspectively it is hard not to mistake for an old memory of a distant friend. Stendhal with unprecedented psychological insight develops characters More...

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Sep 19, 2010

Larry rated it:

It's hard not to compare this book to Balzac's Lost Illusions. Both are about young lower-class men from the countryside, desperate to advance through the brutal class system in 19th century France, who go to Paris to find their fortune, and both ending up in ruin. Balzac's story is much more compelling, perhaps because of more focus on political and workplace issues, whereas Stendahl focuses more on doomed romance - two of them actually - where the young man falls in love with upper class women More...

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Aug 11, 2010

Stephen rated it:

Post-Napoleonic France was no meritocracy.

Stendahl's ambitious and ambiguous protagonist, Julien Sorel, is a peasant with a great memory for Latin and Biblical passages. These academic talents are joined to a youthful sensuality that earns him the romantic admiration of two women, one a bourgeois and the other a titled aristocrat.

The young intellectual does well to depart the family run mill where his father metes out brutal beatings as reward for his lack of interest i More...

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Jul 14, 2010

Matt rated it:

This book has been written about so much and in such insane depth that I'm afraid to even say anything about it for fear that it might turn out to be the scientific consensus that whatever event or character I describe didn't actually exist in the book. But, it's a classic and it's a very entertaining book to read. Don't fear if it ever turns out that you have to read it, or your girlfriend is obsessed with it and demands that you read it or something. In most editions you read, unless you are a More...

0 comments like

Mar 20, 2010

Elizabeth rated it:

I read this for two reasons: First, now, when I die, I can say "Why yes, I've read Stendhal." Right, I don't know who at my deathbed is going to be asking me about Stendhal, but it's one more thing to cross off my worry list. Maybe there's some sort of deathbed reckoning for book snobs that involves a Ghost of Literature Past. Then our conversation could go like this:

Ghost of Literature Past: And you've read Stendhal ... ?
Me: Yes, indeedy!
GLP: Hmmm. Yes. Hmmm .. More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 20, 2009

Jonathan rated it:

Quite good. A well-developed foray into the nature of unconventional love as well as youth's driving need to be remembered. Born into a reactionary society after the Napoleonic wars, Julien at times could be quite a sympathetic character despite his own desire for power. Interestingly, though, I found this sympathy instilled more often through the thoughts and actions of other characters rather than through Julien's own thoughts, no matter how pitiful. I grudgingly found myself laughing at times More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 04, 2007

Andy rated it:

Simply amazing. Along with Thackeray and Balzac, Stendhal is the first true modern novelist. One critic suggested that he was actually ahead of his time - his concern with psychological states has more in common with 20th century literature than most 19th century literature. But, this remains perhaps a paradigmatic example of that 19th century mainstay, the bildungsroman. Probably the best French novelist of the 19th century, equal to Balzac and Flaubert.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 07, 2011

Jason rated it:

Do the French have a mania for imprisonment? Maybe it was just Stendhal, Dumas? Perhaps it has something to do with the restoration in their cases; it would certainly seem that a return to the caste-like estates after the relative social mobility of the Revolution and Empire might inspire that in writers looking at their own time or back upon the Ancien Régime. besides physcial imprisonment, Stendhal also depicts a sort of emotional imprisonment. Julien is constantly having to swallow his e More...

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Jun 20, 2011

David rated it:

The Red and the Black is a profound and witty book about the rise of a poor, handsome and intellectually gifted, young provincial into the salons of High Society in Paris. This novel is also a portrait of an era in 19th century France after the exile of Napoleon to St. Helena. The powerful, witty epigrams that appear in page after page of gorgeous prose left me almost as intrigued by the talent of the author as by the unexpected twists in the exhausting love life and fascinating careers in churc More...

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Feb 10, 2010

Patrice rated it:

I find myself often disappointed at the endings of 19th Century novels. After wading through over five hundred pages of almost Tolstoy-ian descriptions of characters and relationships - this was no exception. The roles of women in early 19th Century society and novels are dismal.

Written in 1829 and published in 1830 The Red and the Black is a novel about a young man's class struggle that brought him from a village in the mountains of France to the most celebrated salons in Paris. Th More...

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Nov 10, 2011

Letteratura rated it:

Un superbe livre que j’ai littéralement dévoré en très peu de temps, moi qui croyais être face devant quelque de très difficile, j’ai découvert un joyeux de la littérature française. Mon avis sera assez long vu l’importance de l’œuvre, donc un peu de patience. Quelque spoiler, pour ce qui ne l’on pas lu, je vous le préviens !!

Pour l’écriture de ce livre, ça a été une véritable découverte littéraire puisque c’est la première fois que je lis du Stendhal, et je vois que son écriture es More...

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Jul 25, 2011

Kezia rated it:

Epic. It's interesting that this is usually considered a novel about the ambitions of the working classes in post-Napoleonic times, but it has as much to say about the ambitions of the upper classes and clergy. Mathilde's ambition for heroism, Mme de Renal's ambition to be loved, M. de Renal's ambition for power, Mme de la Mole's ambition to society. Julien himself is a character that should stand side by side with the great, flawed heroes of literature. Insecure yet egoic, delicate yet strong, More...

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Jan 09, 2010

Yngvild rated it:

Coming back to Stendhal’s The Red and the Black for the first time since school, Julien Sorel is as disagreeable as before, but the spectacular political swings that France underwent in the 18th and 19th centuries become more fascinating the more I learn about them. We talk of political divisions today, but they were nothing like the differences between the supporters of Napoleon, French liberals, and the absolutist monarchy of a Louis XIV.

Apparently, Stendhal had intended to call h More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)