Love (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Stendhal (Author), B. C. J. G Knight (Author), Gilbert Sale (Translator), Suzanne Sale (Translator), Jean Stewart (Introduction)

Book Description

Series: Penguin Classics | Publication Date: December 30, 1975

In 1818, when he was in his mid-thirties, Stendhal met and fell passionately in love with the beautiful Mathilde Dembowski. She, however, was quick to make it clear that she did not return his affections, and in his despair he turned to the written word to exorcise his love and explain his feelings. The result is an intensely personal dissection of the process of falling - and being - in love: a unique blend of poetry, anecdote, philosophy, psychology and social observation. Bringing together the conflicting sides of his nature, the deeply emotional and the coolly analytical, Stendhal created a work that is both acutely personal and universally applicable.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation)

About the Author

Marie Henri Beyle, known as Stendhal (1783 - 1842) fought during the Napoleonic wars. After Napolean's fall, he retired to Italy and began to write under his pseudonym. In 1821 he left Italy and returned to France, where he completed Love. The Red and the Black was his second novel, and he completed three others.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (December 30, 1975)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 014044307X
• ISBN-13: 978-0140443073
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #132,597 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #86 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > French

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The first 'Pale Fire'., October 11, 2000

By 

darragh o'donoghue - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love (Paperback)

There are some readers, the editors of this volume for instance, who would like to reduce this astonishing book to an expression of Stendhal's love for an untouchable woman. Anyone willing to look a little beyond armchair psychology will find a work that is possibly the first 'Pale Fire'. On the surface the work is a philosophical and scientific discourse on the nature of love, and as such it has so much truth and insight that I urge you to give it to your loved one so that he/she might understand you a little better. But this treatise is a translation from the inchoate notes left by an Italian suicide, Lisio Visconti. It is full of anecdotes, stories, digressions, contradictions, repetitions, ellipses, declamations. The writer's objectivity, Kinbote-like, is continually undermined by his obvious madness, his reminiscences of a failed love affair, and that of a friend, Salviati, who may also be Visconti. This textual instability is a constant, playful joy, and perfectly mirrors the difficulties of the book's subject.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A philosophical and elaborate study of love, August 25, 2007

By 

Artemio Rivera (Puerto Rico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Love (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Love by Stendhal is a classic, but the marvel about this book is that you get to experience the thoughts of this Nineteenth Century genius, whose love and obsession for a woman - Metilde - drives him to write this detailed and extremely insightful explanation about the passions and obsessions involved in romantic love. Without the assistance of Modern Psychology, Stendhal is able to explain with surprising precision and insight the feelings we experience when we are in love and the causes for such feelings. Anyone interested in understanding romantic love should read this masterpiece. Stendhal is honest, objective, and realistic ... despite being horribly brokenhearted.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The only remedy for love is to love more ", October 31, 2005

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Love (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

This is Stendhal's analysis of Love. It was allegedly written because of his unrequited love for a woman named Methilde Dembowski. He analyzes in the work the kinds of Love , and the stages of Love. The work contains many aphorisms of great insight and beauty. For Stendhal one kind of Love the love he is afflicted with is a romantic love which is a kind of Madness. In the first part of the book he analyzes this kind of Love.
In the second part of the book he analyzses different national types in relation to Love, finding the French lacking and the Italians more successful.
This is a ' classic work' but in my reading of it it lacks the depth I sense is required to give a more convincing and comprehensive explanation of that Passion which makes us most human.