Sometimes the most interesting projects are the ones you eventually abandon.
My interest in Stendhal’s book “On Love” began with reading “The Red and the Black” in early 2024. I was so impressed with the novel, and Stendhal’s psychological approach, that I thought another write-as-I-read project on his cobbled-together notebooks on love (written well before “The Red and the Black”) might suit me.
Little did I know, but Marie-Henri Beyle (who assumed the pen name Stendhal) was a truly odd man. How odd? Well, his earliest memory from boyhood, when he was 3 or 4, is this "heartwarming" tale about a distant relative:
I see her now, a woman of twenty-five, rather plump and wearing a great deal of rouge. Apparently it was this rouge which annoyed me. As she sat in the middle of a field known as the Glacis de la porte de Bonne, her cheek came exactly level with mine. `Kiss me, Henri,' said she. I didn't want to. She grew angry. I bit her hard. I remember the incident, probably because I was made instantly to feel guilty for it and the matter was endlessly referred to.
And then there was this bon mot from Jonathan Keates' biography of Stendhal:
After his death, in one of the most penetrating tributes paid to the singularity of his genius, his friend Prosper Merimee would recall that `he always seemed convinced by the idea, much canvassed under the Empire, that any woman may be taken by storm and that it is up to every man to attempt it'. We must make what we please of the military metaphor, though it is hard not to equate such a point of view with the image of thrusting, restless imperial acquisitiveness provided by that ultimate totem Napoleon Bonaparte.
Charming. So, yes, Stendhal, despite his literary genius, was poorly equipped to write an emotionally resonant analysis on the nature of love – he shouldn't be anyone's amorous tutor. But in his mid 20s, several years before he became a famous novelist, he gave it a shot. I am learning, perhaps too slowly, that I relate much better to older writers with some perspective on life than young know-it-alls eager to show off. To Stendhal's credit, even at an early age he understood literary merit. A little less than halfway through this very strange book, Stendhal sensed that things weren’t going so well:
I have just re-read a hundred pages of this essay. I seem to have given a remarkably poor idea of true love, the love which pervades the whole consciousness and fills it with pictures, some wildly happy, some hopeless, but all sublime; the love which blinds one to everything else in the world. I am at a loss to express what I can see so clearly; I have never been so painfully aware of my lack of talent. In what intelligible terms can I convey the simplicity of gesture and bearing, the deep earnestness, the look which expresses the precise nuance of feeling so exactly and so candidly, and above all, I repeat, the ineffable unconcern about everything but the woman one loves.
I agree with Stendhal about this, with one exception: there's no need for him to question his talent. Perhaps the project exposed his weakness as an essayist, but he will go on to become a superb novelist, and perhaps he needed to fail as an essayist to move towards dramatic, character-driven narratives.
But if immersing myself for years in Michel de Montaigne's writing taught me anything it is this: you can be a talented scoundrel and succeed as a novelist, but writing personal essays, especially over time, takes depth of character. Montaigne was a great writer because he was endlessly interesting and emotionally generous. Stendhal's youthful shallowness, unfortunately, shows on nearly every page of his unintentional polemic. And I'm not sure that his deepest problems resolved with age.
The elemental problem with “On Love” is that there’s no real love in it, just a strange series of infatuations and hoped for seductions. Throughout, Stendhal is grappling with romantic failure, and many people can relate to that. But in nearly every case, he doesn't know the woman involved at all; he just glimpses her here and there. To make matters worse, Stendhal spares us the specific details about these women that might make them something other than lovely mannequins to behold.
If you've read any of Stendhal's fiction, this absence seems impossible to believe, because his strategic romantic mindset works wonders with fiction. Just witness the brilliant way he introduces Julien's primary love interest Mathilde in "The Red and the Black:"
They sat down to dinner. Julien heard the marquise say something harsh, raising her voice a bit. At almost exactly the same time, he saw a young woman, very blonde and with a fine figure, who seated herself directly across from him. She did not attract him. However, when he looked at her more carefully, he thought he’d never seen such beautiful eyes, though they spoke of an enormously cold heart. Afterward, he decided they simply expressed her boredom at everyone there, though they obviously never forgot how imposing they were supposed to appear. “However, Madame de Rênal had quite beautiful eyes,” he said to himself. “Everyone compliments her. But they’re absolutely different from these.” Julien lacked the experience to realize that what he saw, from time to time, gleaming in Mademoiselle Mathilde’s eyes (he had heard her thus addressed) was a passionate wit. When Madame de Rênal’s eyes grew bright, it was with emotion, or with compassionate indignation, hearing an account of some malicious act. Toward the end of dinner, Julien found words for the kind of beauty he saw in Mademoiselle Mathilde’s eyes. “They’re sparkling,” he said to himself. But, for the rest, she unfortunately resembled her mother, who increasingly displeased him; he stopped looking at her.
The rapid shifting in emotional perspective that he employs here takes us on a voyage to discover her beauty. Notice how Stendhal blurs out every other physical aspect of Mathilde and focuses on her eyes, then looks for the specific depth these eyes bring to his initial impression, in the process comparing her with his last love interest, so he's already trying her on for the same role. The essayist Stendhal in "On Love," by contrast, throws the same emotional shifts at us without character or story, and the result is airy generalizations:
It is because each new beauty gives us the complete fulfilment of a desire. We want her to be sensitive: behold! she is sensitive. Then we would have her as proud as Corneille’s Emilia and, though the two qualities are probably incompatible, she acquires in a trice the soul of a Roman. This is the reason why, on the moral plane, love is the strongest of the passions. In all the others, desires have to adapt themselves to cold reality, but in love realities obligingly rearrange themselves to conform with desire. There is therefore more scope for the indulgence of violent desires in love than in any other passion.
But others disagree with my assessment, or at least find these types of critiques less important. This book has its fans. Among the reasons for the boosterism are people who find wisdom in his concept of crystallization. Personally, I think it makes for an interesting analogy the first time he brings it up, but as a concept that can help describe the process of falling in love, I think it comes up short. And in a footnote very early in the project, Stendhal seems to agree:
I am already quite annoyed enough at having had to adopt the new word crystallization, and it may well be that if this essay wins any readers, they will not forgive me the neologism. I agree that literary talent would have avoided it and I tried to do so, but without any success. In my opinion this word does express the principal process of the madness known as love, a madness which nevertheless provides man with the greatest pleasures the species can know on earth. If I had not used the word crystallization I should have had to replace it repeatedly by an awkward periphrasis, and my description of what happens in the head and in the heart of a man in love would have become obscure, heavy, and wearisome even to me, the author. I hesitate to guess what the reader would have thought of it.
I might have appreciated something obscure, heavy, and wearisome. We are talking here about love, not a souffle recipe. It’s impossible to find a one-size-fits-all definition of love, that is why it’s such an enduring topic for poems and sappy love songs. Plus, something more complicated might have more accurately reflected my feelings as I took on this project.
The bigger problem, for me, is that “On Love” exists entirely in Stendhal’s scheming eager-for-conquest head, and reflects only that perspective. Nearly every tortured moment in the book could have been interesting if there was an emotionally resonant story attached to it, just like every Stendhal mental anguish might be cleared up if Stendhal had spoken sincerely to the woman on his pedestal (or at least given these women an opportunity to voice their perspectives, something he does masterfully in his novels.) As someone who dwells too much in his head, as you’ll notice in the essays below, I somewhat mirror Stendhal, but it’s not the pursuit of sex that drives me, it’s a yearning for something deeper.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that I find this young man on the make infuriating. My failure to relate to Stendhal is somewhat similar to Kafuku’s failed attempts to find kinship with Oto’s final, very young, lover Takatsuki. And like Kafuku, I also can't stop seeking new evidence to help me understand mysterious love interests, when in truth, the most evasive part of my existence is my own recursion-seeking mind.
That isn’t to say that “On Love” is meritless. Something I’ve known about myself for a while, that I’ve always assumed is unusual, is that I’m never attracted to a woman unless I’m aware that she’s attracted to me. (If she then hesitates or backs off, then I'm thrown into complete confusion and can be stuck in that state apparently forever.) Right smack in the middle of Stendhal’s book, he describes something very similar:
In order to fall in love it is not enough just to see a lovely person; on the contrary, extreme loveliness deters the sensitive. You have to see her, if not in love with you, at least stripped of her dignity. Imagine falling in love with a queen, unless she made the first advances!
So, I relate to this, but at the same time, I question Stendhal’s motives. Notice how he includes himself among "the sensitive." Don't believe him, Stendhal was a rake. I suspect, for Stendhal, the desire for a woman to show herself emotionally is really about his vanity. Above all, he wanted to be wanted. This leads me to wonder if there is a hidden wish to this book – he doesn't seem to want to find love as much as he wants to be a famous writer. I'm not sure he was capable of distinguishing those desires.
But raising these critiques of Stendhal makes me wonder about myself. Why is it that my interest in a woman only begins when she shows a glimmer of interest? Am I projecting my wish to be admired as a writer onto the young Stendhal as well?
These issues were present before I began the Stendhal project, and I include a few essays written in the months before the project took root as examples. Also, I wrote my Stendhal essays simultaneously to my “Drive My Car” series, so there was some inevitable overlap in the projects that is reflected here. If you're interested in my "Drive My Car" writing, please purchase the book "Kafuku's Ghost."
The Stendhal project had some fits and starts, and I eventually walked away from it because the source material was too uneven – it was impossible to blog about it chapter by chapter in the manner I wrote about Montaigne – and didn’t think it was providing a strong enough framework for the subjects I wanted to explore. And as you’ll see in some of the concluding essays in this series, after I had officially given up on Stendhal, the confusing emotions I was dealing with continued to haunt me.
As an aside, one reason why Montaigne works so well as a constant source of examination is that different moods and states of mind are built into his work. I regularly believe that I've come to some new understanding of something in my life, only to wake up the next day and notice that "new reality" feels different than it did the day before. Humanity's fickle nature is central to Montaigne's project, while Stendhal's "On Love" is desperately in search of universal laws that turn out not to be true even for him.
But focusing intently on the tortured aspects of love had some benefits for my writing, not only on the "Drive My Car" project but on numerous other writing ventures I have pursued in the past year. It was with Stendhal that I started to figure out just how to bring my long-running Montaigne project in for a landing, leading to my book "Essai by Essay."
So, in a strange way, the Stendhal Project helped me fulfill the wish that inspired it, even if I left it feeling just as alone as when I began.
October 25, 2023: Message in a Bottle. The Police song, and some digressions about the greatness of Adrian Lenker, serve as catalysts for an essay about how my search for a readership and desire for a connection to someone who understands me deeply are intertwined. Something to keep in mind throughout the project – was my wish about connection and love, or to become a real writer?
November 16, 2023: Montaigne, On Idleness. I return to Montaigne's early essay "On Idleness" to note the importance of writing as a tool for "making your mind ashamed of itself." Much of the project that follows should be framed in this context.
November 22, 2023: Opinions. Even though I've written about Montaigne for 14 years now, this is one of the first essays to touch on his attraction to Pyrrhonism. I express a view here that tortured thoughts about love might refute this form of skepticism. I also introduce the backstory that will be revisited throughout the Stendhal project.
February 18, 2024: The Intermittences of the Heart. I jump ahead now to the beginning of the Stendhal project, in what is probably my best essay in the series, probably because it relies heavily on Proust. If you read nothing else in the Stendhal Project, read this one.
February 19, 2024: The Misunderstood Author. It's amusing to look back and see just how enthusiastic I was for this project at the start. But it's understandable, because Stendhal wrote a couple of very amusing prefaces to his book. If only he could adopt this voice throughout his project.
February 20, 2024: The Five Types of Love. I find it curious just how strongly I fight against Stendhal's view that opinions of beauty are all-important in love. Later on in my writing, I will come around to this point of view without ever acknowledging Stendhal's earlier influence.
February 21, 2024: The Definition of Love. In this essay, Stendhal makes the argument that difficulty increases desire. And I completely drop the ball and don't connect this to Montaigne's essay by the same name. Instead, I bring in Erich Fromm and the movie "Perfect Days," which I reference quite a bit in early 2024.
February 22, 2024: The Archetype of Love. Dorothy Tennov was deeply influenced by "On Love," and it became a foundation text for her theory of limerence. This is the first place where I discuss the theory. I believe I had spent a little too much time on Reddit around the time I wrote this and was especially annoyed by category-hungry people.
February 23, 2024: Anima and Animus, Stendhal Style. I have written extensively about Jung's concept of the anima and animus – there is a whole section on this website devoted to it. Here, I specifically apply it to Stendhal as a way of offering an alternate theory to some frameworks of love he'd already introduced.
February 23, 2024: The Embarrassing Consequences. I think this essay borders on revealing too much; I have written numerous versions of it. But for this recap, I think it's appropriate and instructive to readers to keep it here in this form.
February 25, 2024: The Salzburg Bough. I like the way I connect Stendhal's first mention of crystallization with Stendhal Syndrome, a documented medical condition.
February 26, 2024: The Different Beginnings. There is some discussion of the economics of love in this short piece.
February 27, 2024: The Debate. Stendhal finally gives a woman a voice in his narrative. It adds some depth but isn't entirely satisfying.
February 28, 2024: The Sigh. I feel like this is the Stendhal essay where I start to project my feelings. Was he the one feeling that the project was disappointing or was it me? Was he really holding back what was going on inside of him, or was that exactly what I was doing? I bring Woody Allen into this piece, but if I were to do it over, I might try to be more like early-career Woody and just admit that I can't cover a subject like this well without endless autobiography.
February 29, 2024: The Follies of Love. The project is clearly running out of steam, and it won't be long before I take a long break from it.
March 1, 2024: The Chapter about Del Rosso and Lisio. About a year after I wrote this, I came across an essay by Italo Calvino that settled the mystery of who Del Rosso and Lisio were – they were two additional pseudonyms of Stendhal. This sheds light on the crazy project that Stendhal's "On Love" was – it all came about because Stendhal dumped a notebook on a publisher and asked him to make something of it. So if it sometimes reads like the doodles and fragments, that's because it is. Sometimes they work, often they don't. I became so frustrated with his book at this point that I walked away from it for a month.
April 6, 2024: Feeling our Memories. Something in me wished to return to the topics raised in the initial essays in the series. This piece is more about Proust than Stendhal, and maybe I should have realized at this point that I enjoy writing about him and his ideas much more than Stendhal.
April 9, 2024: The Strongest of the Passions. I finally return to Stendhal in this essay, but my "Drive My Car" project is still heavily on my mind as I connect Stendhal's yearnings with Kafuku and his unresolved feelings for Oto.
April 9, 2024: Privacy and Vulnerability. While I was still keeping some distance between my feelings and the Stendhal material I was covering, I wrote this one-off essay where I put many of my issues on the line. This essay brings up some still sore points in my life and reactions to my Montaigne essays from 2020, then makes a plea to anyone out there reading and reacting to my work to ... well, I'm not sure what exactly I was asking.
April 10, 2024: The Monotony. One day later and I'm back to being annoyed with Stendhal over the subjects and quality of his book. Why I'm still hanging onto this project, I'm not sure.
April 11, 2024: The Unhappy Enough. Wherein I express affection for bittersweet romances.
April 11, 2024: The Imagination Finds. The Stendhal Project is about to come to an abrupt end, but I am finding some interesting last scraps of value in these essays. I also pumped out three on the same day ... and probably wrote at least one more on my "Drive My Car" blog that day too.
April 11, 2024: The Mind-Body Problem. I make a point early in this essay to claim that this piece is not about me or anyone I know ... but who was I kidding? I reveal the most when I try to be least autobiographical. And everything here is true – my mind was spinning furiously to convince myself that what I was feeling was a mirage or a projection ... and I convinced my head just fine. My body just wasn't cooperating.
April 12, 2024: Subjects. After that rapid flurry of Stendhal pieces that were fairly strong, in retrospect, I finally gave up and decided that writing about love just wasn't for me. So I was done, problem solved, right? Of course not. The Stendhal project had a three-essay prologue ... but a massive, shape-shifting epilogue. Just beware, the strangest stuff lies ahead.
June 6, 2024: Longing. I walked away for nearly two months and had some pretty heavy work responsibilities that gave me a good excuse for straying. I also traveled to Japan and Singapore in between. But as I return to the topic, the reason I was drawn to Stendhal's "On Love" remained just as lively for me. This is a very honest essay, and I think the conclusion still resonates.
June 7, 2024: My Reader. Up until this point, I haven't self-censored these pieces; I've reproduced them as written and posted. This one is different because I think the ending was too black and white. Where I ended it this time seems more accurate – I don't know how I'd handle the truth, although I know that I would handle it much better today. But tomorrow, I might think differently.
June 7, 2024: What's the Point? Well, if you thought the last two essays were self-revealing, this one keeps going. Looking back, I think I was in a mindset at the time that something could actually happen between this person I'm alluding to and me. Wishful thinking, most likely.
June 8, 2024: Anima and Animus in Context. At this point, I feel like I'm pleading my case via essays. Or perhaps I'm holding a debate with myself over the plausibility of it all. In this one, I pre-empt the argument that the concept of the anima should push me away from desiring a relationship with the person in question. I try to rationalize how the theory could be reapplied, without much success.
June 8, 2024: Privacy. Those last four pieces were removed from my website pretty soon after I published them. I felt ashamed for revealing so much, but also self-attacked for taking them down; I was proud of my own honestly. (Which was a remarkable moment of meta-psychology – being angry with myself for not appreciating my literary and personal growth.)
June 8, 2024: Putting it all Together. Yes, one more story for June 8 ... that was a manic writing day, for sure. I wrote earlier that if you read only one essay from the Stendhal series, make it the Intermittences of the Heart. If you only read two, this should be the other – it connects all of the concepts I've raised and connects them, in my typically indirect manner, to my story (especially the part highlighted in the last batch of essays.)
June 13, 2024: Mysteries and Revelations. The title seems to hint that some resolution is coming, everything will be revealed and explained. Sorry to disappoint. What this final essay in the series demonstrates, once more, is that I am habitually repetitive. Lots of plotlines from the Stendhal and "Drive My Car" essays are brought up again, without novelty. The series really should conclude with something better. And yet, what could be more apt for this project than to end with disappointment? The only conclusion to it all is to say "enough already" and move on.
Spring 2025: Henry, come on. As a coda, I've added an essay I wrote (and frequently revised) on my Montaigne blog this spring about the Lana Del Rey song "Henry, come on." I append it both to demonstrate that these thoughts and feelings linger, but also that they take new shape over time with new influences and more experience. (Which, interestingly enough, lands this project on similar terrain as Montaigne did with “On Experience.”) I like the way this piece closes – the Proust quote both frames and answers the plaintive wish from the "Message in a Bottle" essay that began the series. But please don't consider it a dropping curtain. The journey down the path of "De L'Amour" always circles back.