On Love. Stendhal

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      [1] If this peculiarity is not observed in the case of man, the reason is that on his side there is no modesty to be for a moment sacrificed.

[2] That is to say, that the same tone of existence can give but one instant of perfect happiness; but with a man of passion, his mood changes ten times a day.

[3] The coup de foudre (thunderbolt from the blue), as it was called in the novels of the seventeenth century, which disposes of the fate of the hero and his mistress, is a movement of the soul, which for having been abused by a host of scribblers, is experienced none the less in real life. It comes from the impossibility of this defensive manoeuvre. The woman who loves finds too much happiness in the sentiment, which she feels, to carry through successful deception: tired of prudence, she neglects all precaution and yields blindly to the passion of loving. Diffidence makes the coup de foudre impossible.

CHAPTER III

       OF HOPE

       Table of Contents

      A very small degree of hope is enough to cause the birth of love.

      In the course of events hope may fail—love is none the less born. With a firm, daring and impetuous character, and in an imagination developed by the troubles of life, the degree of hope may be smaller: it can come sooner to an end, without killing love.

      If a lover has had troubles, if he is of a tender, thoughtful character, if he despairs of other women, and if his admiration is intense for her whom he loves, no ordinary pleasure will succeed in distracting him from the second crystallisation. He will prefer to dream of the most doubtful chance of pleasing her one day, than to accept from an ordinary woman all she could lavish.

      The woman whom he loves would have to kill his hope at that period, and (note carefully, not later) in some inhuman manner, and overwhelm him with those marks of patent contempt, which make it impossible to appear again in public.

      Far longer delays between all these periods are compatible with the birth of love.

      It demands much more hope and much more substantial hope, in the case of the cold, the phlegmatic and the prudent. The same is true of people no longer young.

It is the second crystallisation which ensures love's duration, for then every moment makes it clear that the question is—be loved or die. Long months of love have turned into habit this conviction of our every moment—how find means to support the thought of loving no more? The stronger the character the less is it subject to inconstancy.

      This second crystallisation is almost entirely absent from the passions inspired by women who yield too soon.

      After the crystallisations have worked—especially the second, which is far the stronger—the branch is no longer to be recognised by indifferent eyes, for:—

      (1) It is adorned with perfections which they do not see.

      (2) It is adorned with perfections which for them are not perfections at all.

The perfection of certain charms, mentioned to him by an old friend of his love, and a certain hint of liveliness noticed in her eye, are a diamond in the crystallisation[1] of Del Rosso. These ideas, conceived during the evening, keep him dreaming all the night.

An unexpected answer, which makes me see more clearly a tender, generous, ardent, or, as it is popularly called, romantic[2] soul, preferring to the happiness of kings the simple pleasures of a walk with the loved one at midnight in a lonely wood, gives me food for dreams[3] for a whole night.

      Let him call my mistress a prude: I shall call his a whore.

[1] I have called this essay a book of Ideology. My object was to indicate that, though it is called "Love," it is not a novel and still less diverting like a novel. I apologise to philosophers for having taken the word Ideology: I certainly did not intend to usurp a title which is the right of another. If Ideology is a detailed description of ideas and all the parts which can compose ideas, the present book is a detailed description of all the feelings which can compose the passion called Love. Proceeding, I draw certain consequences from this description: for example, the manner of love's cure. I know no word to say in Greek "discourse on ideas." I might have had a word invented by one of my learned friends, but I am already vexed enough at having to adopt the new word crystallisation, and, if this essay finds readers, it is quite possible that they will not allow my new word to pass. To avoid it, I own, would have been the work of literary talent: I tried, but without success. Without this word, which expresses, according to me, the principal phenomenon of that madness called Love—madness, however, which procures for man the greatest pleasures which it is given to the beings of his species to taste on earth—without the use of this word, which it were necessary to replace at every step by a paraphrase of considerable length, the description, which I give of what passes in the head and the heart of a man in love, would have become obscure, heavy and tedious, even for me who am the author: what would it have been for the reader?

      I invite, therefore, the reader, whose feelings the word crystallisation shocks too much, to close the book. To be read by many forms no part of my prayers—happily, no doubt, for me. I should love dearly to give great pleasure to thirty or forty people of Paris, whom I shall never see, but for whom, without knowing, I have a blind affection. Some young Madame Roland, for example, reading her book in secret and precious quickly hiding it, at the least noise, in the drawers of her father's bench—her father the engraver of watches. A soul like that of Madame Roland will forgive me, I hope, not only the word crystallisation, used to express that act of madness which makes us perceive every beauty, every kind of perfection, in the woman whom we begin to love, but also several too daring ellipses besides. The reader has only to take a pencil and write between the lines the five or six words which are missing.

[2] All his actions had at first in my eyes that heavenly air, which makes of a man a being apart, and differentiates him from all others. I thought that I could read in his eyes that thirst for a happiness more sublime, that unavowed melancholy, which yearns СКАЧАТЬ