Two Stories/Deux nouvelles: A Dual-Language Book

Stendhal

may 2014 · Courier Corporation

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In writing these two ardently romantic and turbulent tales, Stendhal delved deep into old Italian narratives and into his own impassioned heart. “Vanina Vanini” and “L’abbesse de Castro” abound in the qualities for which the French author remains enduringly popular: his strong-willed, impulsive characters; his dry wit and keen irony; and the sweeping drama of his historical settings.
Originally published in the Revue de Paris in 1829, “Vanina Vanini” traces the fortunes of an aristocrat’s daughter who falls in love with a wounded soldier, and prefigures Stendhal’s superb novel, The Red and the Black, which appeared two years later. “L’abbesse de Castro,” published in 1839 under a pseudonym in the prestigious Revue des Deux Mondes, was reputedly derived from Roman and Florentine source manuscripts. Consisting chiefly of Stendhal’s own invention, it recounts the illicit liaison and subsequent trial of an abbess.
The only dual-language edition of these stories, this book features an informative introduction and ample footnotes, making it not only a pleasure to read but also a valuable learning and teaching aid for students and teachers of French literature.

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One of the great French novelists of the nineteenth century, Stendhal (pseudonym for Marie-Henri Beyle) describes his unhappy youth with sensitivity and intelligence in his autobiographical novel The Life of Henri Brulard. It was written in 1835 and 1836 but published in 1890, long after his death. He detested his father, a lawyer from Grenoble, France, whose only passion in life was making money. Therefore, Stendhal left home as soon as he could. Stendhal served with Napoleon's army in the campaign in Russia in 1812, which helped inspire the famous war scenes in his novel The Red and the Black (1831). After Napoleon's fall, Stendhal lived for six years in Italy, a country he loved during his entire life. In 1821, he returned to Paris for a life of literature, politics, and love affairs. Stendhal's novels feature heroes who reject any form of authority that would restrain their sense of individual freedom. They are an interesting blend of romantic emotionalism and eighteenth-century realism. Stendhal's heroes are sensitive, emotional individuals who are in conflict with the society in which they live, yet they have the intelligence and detachment to analyze their society and its faults. Stendhal was a precursor of the realism of Flaubert. He once described the novelist's function as that of a person carrying a mirror down a highway so that the mirror would reflect life as it was, for all society.