Stendhal

On the evening of March 22, 1842, Stendhal suddenly suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while walking in the streets of Paris. After the rescue failed, he died at 2 am on the 23rd. He still had several unfinished manuscripts on hand at that time. On Stendhal's epitaph is written: Lived, loved, wrote.

Introduction to Stendhal

His original name was Marie-Henri Beyle, and "Stendhal"(also translated as Stendahl) was his pen name. Born on January 23, 1783 in Grenoble, France, and died on March 23, 1842 in Paris. His life was less than sixty years old, and he started very late in literature. He did not begin to publish his works until he was in his thirties. However, he left a huge spiritual legacy to mankind, including several long works, dozens of short stories, millions of words of literary theories, essays and prose, and travel notes. He is known for his accurate character psychological analysis and concise writing style. Known as one of the most important and earliest practitioners of realism. Representative works are "Armance","Red and Black"(1830), and "The Abbey of Bama"(1839).

The reason why Stendhal has a high position in the history of literature lies not only in his creative achievements, but also in the important role of his creative ideas. Stendhal took the lead in putting forward the issue of the times of literature in the 1820s. At the same time, with his outstanding masterpieces reflecting the times, Stendhal played a prominent role in the literary and artistic struggle against French classicism at that time. It also has important value for people to understand and study that era.

person evaluation

Due to the influence of his grandfather, Stendhal accepted the idea of freedom and equality when he was a child. After becoming an adult, he read the works of Enlightenment thinkers such as Altaeus and Montesquieu, which consolidated the education of Enlightenment thoughts he received in his boyhood and also laid the foundation for his opposition to feudal autocracy and the Catholic Church. In the smoke-filled war between France and European feudal forces, Stendhal bravely mounted his horse and accompanied Napoleon's army on three expeditions of thousands of miles to gallop on the battlefield. During the Restoration of the French Crown, although he left the boiling French political life and lived in Italy, he always paid attention to the domestic political struggle situation. At the same time, he actively devoted himself to the cause of Italian national liberation, and took up the pen of combat in his hand. He continued his political ideals in literary creation and expressed his revolutionary feelings for pursuing freedom.

Stendhal's thoughts transcend the times, and modernist writers regard his works as the embodiment of the art of novel creation. In his masterpiece "Red and Black", Stendhal conducted a profound analysis of the psychology that relies on the simultaneous appearance of the characters 'behavior, making the work more realistic and dramatic. Stendhal opened up a new field. Statham holds his microscope to reveal the most subtle shadows of motives and emotions, making the protagonists of his work closer to life and more in line with themselves than the protagonists of any legendary writer of his generation.