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Adolphe and The Red Notebook
This charming story paints the literary life of Paris in the nineteenth century. Sylvestre Bonnard, a retiring philologist and bachelor, upon finding the daughter of his long ago love, resolves to provide for her and supply her with a dowry. However, she already has a guardian. After a series of incidents, and learning that she is being badly treated, Bonnard is driven to abduct her. He escapes prosecution and eventually is appointed her guardian. When Jeanne, his ward, marries, he sells his treasured library to secure her dowry, guiltily withholding a few volumes, and retires to the country. Critics have split over just what is the crime referred to in the title. Is it the crime of abduction of which Bonnard is guilty, or the crime of retaining a few beloved books from auction, or is his rescue of Jeanne from mistreatment a poignant irony, making his crime one of benevolence in an inherently malignant social order? It is the reader's call.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1816
About the author
Benjamin Constant
595 books87 followersHenri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque was a Swiss-born, nobleman, thinker, writer and French politician.
Constant was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, to descendants of noble Huguenots who fled France during the Huguenot wars in the early 16th century to settle in Lausanne. He was educated by private tutors and at the University of Erlangen, Bavaria, and the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. In the course of his life, he spent many years in France, Switzerland, Germany, and Great Britain.
He was intimate with Anne Louise Germaine de Staël and their intellectual collaboration made them one of the most important intellectual pairs of their time. He was a fervent liberal, fought against the Restauration and was active in French politics as a publicist and politician during the latter half of the French Revolution and between 1815 and 1830. During part of this latter period, he sat in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower legislative house of the Restoration-era government. He was one of its most eloquent orators and a leader of the parliamentary block first known as the Independants and then as "liberals."
From Wikipedia
Constant was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, to descendants of noble Huguenots who fled France during the Huguenot wars in the early 16th century to settle in Lausanne. He was educated by private tutors and at the University of Erlangen, Bavaria, and the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. In the course of his life, he spent many years in France, Switzerland, Germany, and Great Britain.
He was intimate with Anne Louise Germaine de Staël and their intellectual collaboration made them one of the most important intellectual pairs of their time. He was a fervent liberal, fought against the Restauration and was active in French politics as a publicist and politician during the latter half of the French Revolution and between 1815 and 1830. During part of this latter period, he sat in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower legislative house of the Restoration-era government. He was one of its most eloquent orators and a leader of the parliamentary block first known as the Independants and then as "liberals."
From Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 10, 2023
"Love makes up for the lack of long memories by a sort of magic."
August 10, 2023
"I still remember with emotion the days and nights that we spent together, drinking tea and talking with inexhaustible ardour on every possible subject" (127).
April 26, 2015
It took a book by a Swiss written in 1807 for me to experience the clearest, most insightful description of what I went through in many relationships -- whether I was in them for love or only for the pleasure of giving the other person pleasure. Astonishing self-honesty from Benjamin Constant, one of the founders of liberalism.
July 20, 2026
“It is a fearful misfortune not to be loved when you love; but it is a much greater misfortune to be loved passionately when you love no longer.”
Wow, I REALLY loved both of these stories, despite how different they are from one another. 5 stars for Adolphe and a solid 4 for The Red Notebook, but I’m rounding it all up to 5 because I had such a good time.
In Adolphe, our narrator wreaks psychological havoc on an unsuspecting married woman named Ellénore, ruining both of their lives beyond repair through the unchecked indulgence of his own narcissism. The relationship between Adolphe and Ellénore is excruciatingly toxic; a liaison initiated entirely by Adolphe out of selfish curiosity/boredom, accelerated through incessant love-bombing, and sustained by his insatiable vanity, cowardice, and insecurity.
His self-awareness of these behavioral defects does not negate the harm they cause, nor does it alleviate any of the consequent suffering incurred. A guilty conscience needs no accuser, but unfortunately Adolphe is addicted to his crime: perpetuating a love he does not feel, in order to receive a love he does not deserve.
His megalomaniacal desire to feel loved and needed by someone is more important than his own happiness, or the happiness of Ellénore, so he chooses to sacrifice them both to the insatiable gaping maw of his narcissism.
Through Adolphe’s cruel and continual alternation between tenderness and contempt, obsession and avoidance, hot and cold, etc. he gradually manipulates Ellénore into a frenzied state of confused codependency while simultaneously deteriorating her self-esteem, peace of mind, and overall sense of reality; she becomes emotionally volatile, physically weak, and desperately insecure. At one point, she even starts to feign interest in other men, publicly encouraging their flirtatious conversations in the hopes of making Adolphe jealous.
“Perhaps she found in the waste in which I left her heart a sort of consolation in hearing words of love which I had long ceased to pronounce.”
He needs to be loved deeply, but does not love her in return. He’s aware that he’s hurting her, but is too cowardly and selfish to let her go. He’s made it so she cannot live without him, and he resents her for it. So, after forging the bars of his own prison, Adolphe locks both himself and Ellénore inside, and proceeds to spend all of his energy devising an elaborate escape. Meanwhile, the key is in his pocket the entire time.
In the end, Adolphe’s “freedom” comes at a tragic price. Ellénore dies of a broken heart, and Adolphe still mourns only for himself and what HE has lost; in Ellénore’s death, he loses the only person who cared about him in the entire world. Adolphe used her love, selfishly, to give his life meaning and validation, only to repay her with insincerity, resentment, and endless suffering.
“Formerly, all my actions had an aim; I was sure that each one would either spare a pain or cause a pleasure; of this I had complained; I had been irritated that a friendly eye should observe my movements, that the happiness of another should be attached to them. No one now observed them; they interested nobody; no one contended with me for my time nor my hours; no voice called me back when I went out. I was free indeed; I was no longer loved. I was a stranger to all the world.”
The Red Notebook, on the other hand, was a riotous romp of idle adolescent delinquency. Our narrator possesses a unique combination of apathetic charm, vapid naivety, dry wit, and financial recklessness; like a perfect mixture of Holden Caulfield and Bertram Wooster (sans Jeeves). It’s like reading the diary of a wayward Bertram Caulfield as he navigates his first real taste of freedom in 18th century Europe, and all the wacky hijinks that inevitably ensue given his particular brain chemistry & eclectic bourgeois upbringing. Simply superb.
January 21, 2020
"You know my situation, that character of mine which people call strange and unsociable, that heart which is out of tune with all the interests of others, which is solitary in the midst of society, yet which suffers from the solitude to which it is condemned."
This book is startling, because Constant is frightfully candid about the rise and collapse of a love affair. His psychological insights and vulnerable confessions must have truly unsettled people who knew him, especially those who knew Adolphe was a thinly disguised autobiography, and those who heard Constant real it aloud on numerous occasions. I won't quote any of the many romantic passages I marked, because future readers should privately marvel at the excerpts that resonate with them - the lines above and below are other observations I wanted to share, though. I'll only note I have William Gaddis to thank for this experience, as he nods to the book early in The Recognitions when Wyatt lends it to Otto ("Here. Take this. Keep it. Read it. It's a good novel.").
Five stars for Adolphe, three for The Red Notebook, a posthumously published account of Constant's wild adolescence.
I simply wish to state for the benefit of others, since I have now retired from the world, that it takes time to accustom one's self to mankind, fashioned as it is by self-interest, affectation, vanity, and fear. The astonishment of youth at the appearance of so artificial and labored a society denotes an unspoiled heart rather than a malicious mind.
I am not surprised that man needs a religion; what astonishes me is that he should ever think himself sufficiently strong or sufficiently secure against misfortune to dare reject one: his weakness should, I feel, dispose him to invoke them all; in the dark night which surrounds us, can we afford to reject a single gleam? In the midst of the stream which is bearing us away, is there a single branch to which we dare refuse to cling?
This book is startling, because Constant is frightfully candid about the rise and collapse of a love affair. His psychological insights and vulnerable confessions must have truly unsettled people who knew him, especially those who knew Adolphe was a thinly disguised autobiography, and those who heard Constant real it aloud on numerous occasions. I won't quote any of the many romantic passages I marked, because future readers should privately marvel at the excerpts that resonate with them - the lines above and below are other observations I wanted to share, though. I'll only note I have William Gaddis to thank for this experience, as he nods to the book early in The Recognitions when Wyatt lends it to Otto ("Here. Take this. Keep it. Read it. It's a good novel.").
Five stars for Adolphe, three for The Red Notebook, a posthumously published account of Constant's wild adolescence.
I simply wish to state for the benefit of others, since I have now retired from the world, that it takes time to accustom one's self to mankind, fashioned as it is by self-interest, affectation, vanity, and fear. The astonishment of youth at the appearance of so artificial and labored a society denotes an unspoiled heart rather than a malicious mind.
I am not surprised that man needs a religion; what astonishes me is that he should ever think himself sufficiently strong or sufficiently secure against misfortune to dare reject one: his weakness should, I feel, dispose him to invoke them all; in the dark night which surrounds us, can we afford to reject a single gleam? In the midst of the stream which is bearing us away, is there a single branch to which we dare refuse to cling?
February 15, 2017
Başyapıt.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews