And so I finally finished this epic of the XIX century French literature, and might I say, I am surprised at the pace I was able to achieve. After skipping a couple of days for reading it, over the whole week and a half I've had budgeted for it, at the end I actually went through it with a total of 4-5 days part-time reading! Of course none of this would have been possible had it not been for the incredibly gripping style of Marie-Henry Baile, popularly known as Stendhal.

The Charterhouse of Parma takes a central place among the freshly emerged genre of realism, which founders are Stendhal, Balzac and Flaubert. With its dynamic prose, the novel tells the life story of Fabrice del Dongo, a young Italian aristocrat who escapes from Napoleon's battle of Waterloo still as a teenager. Upon his return to Italy, he gets thrown into political intrigues, falls in love a couple of times, gets thrown in jail, and finally becomes a respected archbishop in Parma, where the people hail him as hero. Of course, this is only a grain in the vast plot lines of this remarkable novel, for in it the action and the drama flow fast directly from Stendhal's thoughts. The main intrigue is between Fabrice, his aunt Gina, later on the Duchess of Sanseverina, and her lover Count Mosca. Those characters are extremely well developed, as is expected from the author, and it could even be said that Senseverina and Mosca have the main hero status, as they guid Fabrice in his exploits, throughout the novel. There is no way not to fill at awe with Gina, as she passionately, brilliantly and flirtatiously influences the people around her, and does everything she can for the better of her beloved nephew.

The novel is a just satire upon nobility and the problems people with power create just out of boredom sometimes. (as in the case of the Prince) Being a real textbook on Machiavellian politics, The Charterhouse of Parma depicts court intrigue perfectly, up to the smallest details. It is a testament of the good winning at the end, and it shows the spontaneity of human relations. Stendhal, as a French author is particularly ironic on Italian politics, though otherwise he adores the Italian way of life, having spend a big part of his life there. Even if he denounces the politics of the court, he recognizes the positive influence of such a society on the people who are willing to fight, contrasting it with the "boring" American republic.

On the plus side, I would definitely single out the yet again dynamic and always engaging style of the author. He makes real characters and events, with always unexpected endings, as opposed to the ideas of Romanticism. The description of the battle scenes in the beginning, and Napoleon's army (which Stendhal was himself part of) are one of the best pieces of literature I've ever read! And I just can't avoid not to quote that great paragraph from the first chapter:

"On May 15, 1796, General Bonaparte entered Milan at the head of that young army which had lately crossed the Lodi bridge and taught the world that after so many centuries Caesar and Alexander had a successor. The miracles of valor and genius Italy had witnessed in a few months wakened a slumbering nation: just eight days before the French arrived, the Milanese still regarded them as no more than a band of brigands who habitually fled before the troops of His Imperial and Royal Majesty: at least so they were told three times a week by a little news-sheet the size of a man's hand, printed on dirty paper."

On the negative side, it should be pointed out that Stendhal wrote Charterhouse in a bit less than 8 weeks, dictating it, so at times the plot progresses a little too fast, and I'd often had to struggle with remembering where each character fit in the picture. Also, the prose, obviously as dynamic as the character's state of mind, is at times a testament to Stendhal's revolt against proper grammar, and makes a sometimes easy to read paragraph a real challenge. But overall, that's exactly what makes getting through this novel all the more rewarding, and it is definitely a break from the linguistic strictness of authors like Maupassant and Flaubert. (though both of course write very beautiful)

Charterhouse of Parma is not on the level of The Red and the Black in many ways, but maybe its spontaneity and chaos are exactly what sets it apart. It is definitely an enriching read, and a very funny one at times.