On Love - Stendhal

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and Manon Lescaut, have been written in France, where the plant called Love is always in fear of ridicule, is overgrown by the demands of vanity, the national passion, and reaches its full height scarcely ever.

      What is a knowledge of Love got from novels? After seeing it described—without ever feeling it—in hundreds of celebrated volumes, what is to be said of seeking in mine the explanation of this madness? I answer like an echo: "'Tis madness."

      Poor disillusioned young lady, would you enjoy again that which busied you so some years ago, which you dared mention to no one, which almost cost you your honour? It is for you that I have refashioned this book and tried to make it clearer. After reading it, never speak of it without a little scornful turn, and throw it in your citron bookcase behind the other books—I should even leave a few pages uncut.

      'Tis not only a few pages that will be left uncut by the imperfect creature, who thinks himself philosopher, because he has remained always stranger to those reckless emotions, which cause all our happiness of a week to depend upon a glance. Some people, coming to the age of discretion, use the whole force of their vanity to forget that there was a day when they were able to stoop so low as to court a woman and expose themselves to the humiliation of a refusal: this book will win their hatred. Among the many clever people, whom I have seen condemn this work, for different reasons but all angrily, those only seemed to me ridiculous, who had the twofold conceit to pretend always to have been above the weakness of sensibility, and yet to possess enough penetration to judge a priori of the degree of exactitude of a philosophic treatise, which is nothing but an ordered description of these weaknesses.

      The grave persons, who enjoy in society their reputation as safe men with no romantic nonsense, are far nearer to the understanding of a novel, however impassioned, than of a book of philosophy, wherein the author describes coldly the various stages of the malady of the soul called Love. The novel moves them a little; but before the philosophic treatise these sensible people are like blind men, who getting a description of the pictures in a museum read out to them, would say to the author: "You must agree, sir, that your work is horribly obscure." What is to happen if these blind men chance to be wits, established long since in possession of that title and with sovereign claims to clairvoyance? The poor author will be treated prettily. In fact, it is what happened to him at the time of the first edition. Several copies were actually burnt through the raging vanity of very clever people. I do not speak of insults all the more flattering for their fury: the author was proclaimed to be coarse, immoral, a writer for the people, a suspicious character, etc. In countries outworn by monarchy, these titles are the surest reward for whoever thinks good to write on morals and does not dedicate his book to the Mme. Dubarry of the day. Blessed literature, if it were not in fashion, and interested those alone for whom it was written!

      The laborious and active, very estimable and very positive life of a counsellor of State, of a manufacturer of cotton goods or of a banker with a keen eye for loans finds its reward in millions, not in tender sensation. Little by little the heart of these gentlemen ossifies: the positive and the useful are for them everything, and their soul is closed to that feeling, which of all others has the greatest need of our leisure and makes us most unfit for any rational and steady occupation.

      The only object of this preface is to proclaim that this book has the misfortune of being incomprehensible to all who have not found time to play the fool. Many people will feel offended and I trust they will go no further.

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      I write for a hundred readers only and of these unhappy charming beings, without hypocrisy or moral cant, whom I would please, I know scarcely a couple. Of such as lie to gain consideration as writers, I take little heed. Certain fine ladies should keep to the accounts of their cook and the fashionable preacher of the day, be it Massillon or Mme. Necker, to be able to talk on these topics with the women of importance who mete out consideration. And to be sure, in France this noble distinction is always to be won by turning high priest of any fad.

      To anyone who would read this book I would say: In all your life have you been unhappy six months for love?

      Or, was your soul ever touched by sorrow not connected with the thought of a lawsuit, with failure at the last election, or with having cut a less brilliant figure than usual last season at Aix? I will continue my indiscretions and ask if in the year you have read any of those impudent works, which compel the reader to think? For example, Émile of J. J. Rousseau, or the six volumes of Montaigne? If, I should say, you have never suffered through this infirmity of noble minds, if you have not, in defiance of nature, the habit of thinking as you read, this book will give you a grudge against its author: for it will make you suspect that there exists a certain happiness, unknown to you and known to Mlle. de Lespinasse.

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      I come to beg indulgence of the reader for the peculiar form of this Physiology of Love. It is twenty-eight years (in 1842) since the turmoil, which followed the fall of Napoleon, deprived me of my position. Two years earlier chance threw me, immediately after the horrors of the retreat from Russia, into the midst of a charming town, where I had the enchanting prospect of passing the rest of my days. In happy Lombardy, at Milan, at Venice, the great, or rather only, business of life is pleasure. No attention, there, to the deeds and movements of your neighbour; hardly a troubled thought for what is to happen to you. If a man notice the existence of his neighbour, it does not enter his head to hate him. Take away from the occupations of a French provincial town jealousy—and what is left? The absence, the impossibility of that cruel jealousy forms the surest part of that happiness, which draws all the provincials to Paris.

      Following the masked balls of Carnival, which in 1820 was more brilliant than usual, the noise of five or six completely reckless proceedings occupied the society of Milan an entire month; although they are used over there to things which in France would pass for incredible. The fear of ridicule would in this country paralyse such fantastic actions: only to speak of them I need great courage.

      One evening people were discussing profoundly the effects and the causes of these extravagances, at the house of the charming Mme. Pietra Grua(6), who happened, extraordinarily enough, not to be mixed up with these escapades. The thought came to me that perhaps in less than a year I should

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