A Lion for Love: A Critical Biography of Stendhal (review)

Abstract

368 biography Vol. 10, No. 4 This red and gold volume is handsomely bound, as befits an item in the thirty-ninevolume facsimile series entitled "The Victorian Muse. Selected Criticism and Parody of the Period," edited by William E. Fredeman, Ira Bruce Nadel, and John F. Stasny. Individual items carry their original periodical paginations, leaving the volume itself unpaged: a minor annoyance. Type faces vary, and some require excellent eyes, or a magnifying glass. The great periodicals of the Victorian era such as Fraser's Magazine, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Temple Bar, and The Quarterly Review were above such trivia. Victorian Biography is a solid contribution to the field of biographical studies. Each essay is worthy of our attention. And from the collection as a whole emerges a portrait not only of modern biography but of the values of the age. Humanism and responsibility are the tonic notes. Life matters. Patricia Morley, Concordia University, Montreal Robert Alter, with the collaboration of Carol Cosman, A Lion for Love: A Critical Biography of Stendhal. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986. 285 pp. $8.95. A quotation from Gérard Genette's Figures II serves as the epigraph to Part III of Robert Alter's sprightly biography of Stendhal: "The two caryatids of the old style of literary studies are called, one may recollect, the man and his work. The exemplary value of the Stendhal phenomenon comes from the way he shakes these two notions by altering their symmetry, by confusing their difference, by deflecting their relations ." Genette's formulation has the value of underlining both the complexity and the importance of the relationship between Henri Beyle and the writing which is now collectively known as the work of Stendhal. It is a relationship that has intrigued and fascinated Stendhal critics since the first global essay on Stendhal by Auguste Bussière in the Revue des Deux-Mondes in 1843, less than a year after Stendhal's death. Robert Alter's work is based on the belief that much of this "man-and-his-works" approach has been unsatisfactory, having frequently become bogged down in attempts to discern biographical sources for fictional representations. Alter's intent, then, was to write "a biography in which the narrative and the interpretive strands would be constantly intertwined" while staying clear of the quagmire of sources and the temptation of psychoanalysis. He has succeeded admirably, creating what is surely the best critical biography of his subject to date. Biographies of Stendhal have not been lacking in either French or English. In France, distinguished stendhaliens such as Albert Collignon (1868), Paul Arbelet (1912), Paul Hazard (1927), Henri Martineau (1953), and Victor Del Litto (1965) have produced competent and increasingly perceptive biographies. Matthew Josephson (1946), Joanna Richardson (1974), and Gita May (1977) have made similar contributions in English. These books have their strengths and weaknesses, but none combines sheer insight into the man, Henri Beyle, with first-rate criticism of Stendhal's work to the extent that Alter's book does. Some of these biographies are also more complete than Alter's. Indeed, a biography that would contain all that is known about Stendhal might well fill three or four substantial volumes. There is a wealth of detail about Stendhal's life that is known to specialists that does not appear in this book. Alter has chosen to concentrate on what is significant to the understanding of the man, and while it might be possible to argue that some of the information he has left REVIEWS 369 out might also help to understand Stendhal, Alter's decision has resulted in a book that is easily read, though never thin in substance or interpretation. As Alter's title suggests, one important facet of Stendhal's life which is followed closely is the importance of love. From his boyhood infatuation for Virginie Kubly to his nearly desperate attempts to find love at the end of his life, Stendhal was an active practitioner and keen observer of sexual politics. Alter deals with the Oedipal drama involved in this quest, but he is also keenly aware of the role that literary models play in Stendhal's amorous adventures (which he sometimes endowed with epic...