Egoists, A Book of Supermen: Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Anatole France, Huysmans, Barrès, Nietzsche, Blake, Ibsen, Stirner, and Ernest Hello — Nietzsche — John Shaqi
Egoists, A Book of Supermen: Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Anatole France, Huysmans, Barrès, Nietzsche, Blake, Ibsen, Stirner, and Ernest Hello
Nietzsche · en
The wonder is that thus far no devoted Stendhalian has prepared a
similar _carton_ with the names and pictures of their master's--dare
we say?--victims. Stendhal loved many women, and like Goethe his
first love was his mother. For him she was the most precious image
of all, and he was jealous of his father. This was at the age of
seven; but the precocity of the boy and his exaggerated sensibility
must be remembered--which later brought him so much unhappiness
and so little joy. A casual examination of the list of his loves,
reciprocated or spurned, would make a companion to that of Weimar.
Their names are Mélanie Guilbert-Louason, Angela Pietragrua, Mlle.
Beretter, the Countess Palffy, Menta, Elisa, Livia B., Madame Azur,
Mina de Grisheim, Mme. Jules, and _la petite_ P. The number he loved
without consolation was still larger. Despite his hussar manœuvres,
Stendhal was easily rebuffed. It is odd that Goethe's and Stendhal's
fair ones, upon whom they poured poems and novels, did not die--that
is, immediately--on being deserted. Goethe relieved the pain of many
partings by writing a poem or a play and seeking fresh faces. Stendhal
did the same--substituting a novel or a study or innumerable letters
for poems and plays. He believed that one nail drove out another;
which is very soothing to masculine vanity. But did any woman break
her heart because of his fickleness? Frau von Stein of all the women
loved by Goethe probably took his defection seriously. She didn't kill
herself, however. He wounded many a heart, yet the majority of his
loves married, and apparently happily. Stendhal, ugly as he was, slew
his hundreds; they recovered after he had passed on to fresh conquests;
a fact that he, with his accustomed sincerity, did not fail to note.
Yet this same gallant was among the few in the early years of the
nineteenth century to declare for the enfranchisement, physical and
spiritual, of woman. He was a _féministe_. But, in reality, his theory
of love resembled that of the writer who said that "it was simple and
brief, like a pressure of the hand between sympathetic persons, or a
gay luncheon between two friends of which a pleasant memory remains, if
not also a gentle gratitude toward the companion." I quote from memory.
It was at Rome that he first resolved to tell the story of his life.
In the dust he traced the initials of the beloved ones. In his book he
omitted no details. His motto was: _la vérité toute nue_. If he has not
spared himself, he has not spared others. What can the critics, who
recently blamed George Moore for his plain speech in his memoirs, say
to Stendhal's journals and La Vie de Henri Brulard? Many of the names
were at first given with initials or asterisks; Mérimée burned the
letters Stendhal sent him, and regretted the act. But the Stendhalians,
the young enthusiasts of the Stendhal Club, have supplied the missing
names--those of men and women who have been dead half a century and
more.