| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
by Stendhal
|
by Honore De Balzac
|
by Honore De Balzac
|
by Honoré de Balzac
|
by Stendhal
|
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Officer, diplomat, spy, journalist, and intermittent genius, Marie Henri Beyle employed more than 200 aliases in the course of his crowded career. His most famous moniker, however, was Stendhal, which he affixed to his greatest work, The Charterhouse of Parma. The author spent a mere seven weeks cranking out this marvel in 1838, setting the fictional equivalent of a land-speed record. To be honest, there are occasional signs of haste, during which he clearly bypassed le mot juste in favor of narrative zing. So what? Stendhal at his sloppiest is still wittier, and wiser about human behavior, than just about any writer you could name. No wonder so meticulous a stylist as Paul Valéry was happy to forgive his sins against French grammar: "We should never be finished with Stendhal. I can think of no greater praise than that."
The plot of The Charterhouse of Parma suggests a run-of-the-mill potboiler, complete with court intrigue, military derring-do, and more romance than you can shake a saber at. But Stendhal had an amazing, pre-Freudian grasp of psychology (at least the Gallic variant). More than most of his contemporaries, he understood the incessant jostling of love, sex, fear, and ambition, not to mention our endless capacity for self-deception. No wonder his hero, Fabrizio de Dongo, seems to know everything and nothing about himself. Even under fire at the Battle of Waterloo, the young Fabrizio has a tendency to lose himself in Napoleonic reverie:
Suddenly everyone galloped off. A few moments later Fabrizio saw, twenty paces ahead, a ploughed field that seemed to be strangely in motion; the furrows were filled with water, and the wet ground that formed their crests was exploding into tiny black fragments flung three or four feet into the air. Fabrizio noticed this odd effect as he passed; then his mind returned to daydreams of the Marshal's glory. He heard a sharp cry beside him: two hussars had fallen, riddled by bullets; and when he turned to look at them, they were already twenty paces behind the escort.The quote above, a famous one, captures something of Stendhal's headlong style. Until now, most English-speaking readers have experienced it via C.K. Scott-Moncrieff's superb 1925 translation. But now Richard Howard has modernized his predecessor's period touches, streamlined some of the fussier locutions, and generally given Stendhal his high-velocity due. The result is a timely version of a timeless masterpiece, which shouldn't need to be updated again until, oh, 2050. Crammed with life, lust, and verbal fireworks, The Charterhouse of Parma demonstrates the real truth of its creator's self-composed epitaph: "He lived. He wrote. He loved." --James Marcus --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
"The Charterhouse of Parma has never sparkled in English with such radiance as it does in Richard Howard's new translation."
--Edmund White
"[A] superb new translation."
--Bernard Knox, The New York Review of Books
"An epic tale of war, love, sex, politics, and religion...an action-packed narrative."
--The New Yorker -- Review
--Edmund White
"[A] superb new translation."
--Bernard Knox, The New York Review of Books
"An epic tale of war, love, sex, politics, and religion...an action-packed narrative."
--The New Yorker -- Review
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Inside This Book
(learn more)
First Sentence:
On May 15, 1796, General Bonaparte entered Milan at the head of that young army which had lately crossed the Lodi bridge and taught the world that after so many centuries Caesar and Alexander had a successor. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
aviary window, dreadful racket, marble chapel, purple stockings, whist table Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Count Mosca, Marchese Crescenzi, Marchesa Raversi, General Fabio Conti, Farnese Tower, Don Cesare, Serene Highness, Fabrizio del Dongo, Prime Minister, Duchess Sanseverina, Lake Como, Mistress of the Robes, Marchese del Dongo, Palazzo Sanseverina, Countess Pietranera, Signor del Dongo, General Fontana, Ferrante Palla, General Conti, Grand Vicar, Castle of Grianta, Count Pietranera, Marchesa del Dongo, Monsignore Fabrizio, San Giovanni New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
On May 15, 1796, General Bonaparte entered Milan at the head of that young army which had lately crossed the Lodi bridge and taught the world that after so many centuries Caesar and Alexander had a successor. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
aviary window, dreadful racket, marble chapel, purple stockings, whist table Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Count Mosca, Marchese Crescenzi, Marchesa Raversi, General Fabio Conti, Farnese Tower, Don Cesare, Serene Highness, Fabrizio del Dongo, Prime Minister, Duchess Sanseverina, Lake Como, Mistress of the Robes, Marchese del Dongo, Palazzo Sanseverina, Countess Pietranera, Signor del Dongo, General Fontana, Ferrante Palla, General Conti, Grand Vicar, Castle of Grianta, Count Pietranera, Marchesa del Dongo, Monsignore Fabrizio, San Giovanni New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 10
books:
See all 10 books this book cites
100
books
cite this book:
See all 100 books citing this book
- The Red and the Black by Marie De Stendhal in Front Matter, and Back Matter
- The Red and the Black (Penguin Classics) by Stendhal in Front Matter, and Back Matter
- Lucien Leuwen (Bookmasters) by Stendhal in Front Matter
- The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Modern Library Classics) by Laurence Sterne in Back Matter
- The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro): Vocal Score by Ruth and Thomas Martin in Back Matter
See all 10 books this book cites
- The Penguin Classic Baby Name Book by Carol Wallace on 5 pages
- The Muse As Eros: Music, Erotic Fantasy And Male Creativity in the Romantic And Modern Imagination by Stephen Downes on 4 pages
- The Dark Heart of Italy by Tobias Jones on 4 pages
- The Red and the Black (Signet classics) by Stendhal on 4 pages
- The Red and the Black (Modern Library Classics) by Stendhal in Front Matter (1), Front Matter (2), and Back Matter
See all 100 books citing this book
Books on Related Topics
(learn more)
|
|
What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?
 |
75% buy the item featured on this page: The Charterhouse of Parma (Modern Library Classics) $9.56 |
 |
9% buy The Red and the Black (Penguin Classics) $8.00 |
 |
8% buy The Charterhouse of Parma (Oxford World's Classics) $11.95 |
 |
5% buy Love (Penguin Classics) $10.88 |
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Listmania!
|
|
So You'd Like to...
Product Information from the Amapedia Community
Beta (What's this?)Be the first person to add an article about this item at Amapedia.com.
› See featured Amapedia.com articles
Look for Similar Items by Category
Look for Similar Items by Subject
Your Recent History
(What's this?)|
After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. |
