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Bezig met laden... Egotistische herinneringen (1832)door Stendhal, Matthew Josephson (Redacteur)
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. On the matter of sex. What I got out of this book was exactly one thing. That in some parts of Europe at the time, women and men were equal in this respect: everybody had lovers. It wasn’t something men did to women. This makes scenes that might otherwise be repugnant resonate with eroticism. Perhaps the equality is merely in the minds of men – but Stendhal is a realist and so I doubt that. An expert in the area might demolish my illusions, however….though I’m not sure I want you to, if you are reading this. In Chapter 3, two of Stendhal’s friends decide to cheer him up by taking him to see a courtesan.
Of course, I had to hurry off to Google to look up Titian’s Duchess of Urbino. What was she wearing? Ah… I should have guessed…. That’s what she’s wearing. It turns out that this picture is a matter of great controversy – nothing to do with whether you like her outfit, by the way. Mark Twain said of it:
What Twain is saying here, in Tramp Abroad I think, is that if you wrote this picture in words – it would be obscene rather than erotic. Indeed, it has been referred to as the masturbating Venus…so you see what I mean. Interesting in this context, that Stendhal, whether intuitively or consciously knew that to be the case, and thus refers to Alexandrine in this most sexy way without any sex in his language whatsoever. A mere reference to a painting says it all. I’m completely ignorant of art, but I expect back then educated people reading this book would have understood the reference immediately…indeed, maybe everybody else does! But permit the matter to be more complex. Is it not fair to say that although in this case the exquisitely erotic painting of the Duchess/Venus looking directly as us, her invited lover, hard nipples, touching herself, does the job no words would, to Twain’s chagrin; at the same time, one could readily imagine a tacky picture rendered delicate via choice words. Tit for tat – if you will forgive me putting it this way? On the matter of sex. What I got out of this book was exactly one thing. That in some parts of Europe at the time, women and men were equal in this respect: everybody had lovers. It wasn’t something men did to women. This makes scenes that might otherwise be repugnant resonate with eroticism. Perhaps the equality is merely in the minds of men – but Stendhal is a realist and so I doubt that. An expert in the area might demolish my illusions, however….though I’m not sure I want you to, if you are reading this. In Chapter 3, two of Stendhal’s friends decide to cheer him up by taking him to see a courtesan.
Of course, I had to hurry off to Google to look up Titian’s Duchess of Urbino. What was she wearing? Ah… I should have guessed…. That’s what she’s wearing. It turns out that this picture is a matter of great controversy – nothing to do with whether you like her outfit, by the way. Mark Twain said of it:
What Twain is saying here, in Tramp Abroad I think, is that if you wrote this picture in words – it would be obscene rather than erotic. Indeed, it has been referred to as the masturbating Venus…so you see what I mean. Interesting in this context, that Stendhal, whether intuitively or consciously knew that to be the case, and thus refers to Alexandrine in this most sexy way without any sex in his language whatsoever. A mere reference to a painting says it all. I’m completely ignorant of art, but I expect back then educated people reading this book would have understood the reference immediately…indeed, maybe everybody else does! But permit the matter to be more complex. Is it not fair to say that although in this case the exquisitely erotic painting of the Duchess/Venus looking directly as us, her invited lover, hard nipples, touching herself, does the job no words would, to Twain’s chagrin; at the same time, one could readily imagine a tacky picture rendered delicate via choice words. Tit for tat – if you will forgive me putting it this way? On the matter of sex. What I got out of this book was exactly one thing. That in some parts of Europe at the time, women and men were equal in this respect: everybody had lovers. It wasn’t something men did to women. This makes scenes that might otherwise be repugnant resonate with eroticism. Perhaps the equality is merely in the minds of men – but Stendhal is a realist and so I doubt that. An expert in the area might demolish my illusions, however….though I’m not sure I want you to, if you are reading this. In Chapter 3, two of Stendhal’s friends decide to cheer him up by taking him to see a courtesan.
Of course, I had to hurry off to Google to look up Titian’s Duchess of Urbino. What was she wearing? Ah… I should have guessed…. That’s what she’s wearing. It turns out that this picture is a matter of great controversy – nothing to do with whether you like her outfit, by the way. Mark Twain said of it:
What Twain is saying here, in Tramp Abroad I think, is that if you wrote this picture in words – it would be obscene rather than erotic. Indeed, it has been referred to as the masturbating Venus…so you see what I mean. Interesting in this context, that Stendhal, whether intuitively or consciously knew that to be the case, and thus refers to Alexandrine in this most sexy way without any sex in his language whatsoever. A mere reference to a painting says it all. I’m completely ignorant of art, but I expect back then educated people reading this book would have understood the reference immediately…indeed, maybe everybody else does! But permit the matter to be more complex. Is it not fair to say that although in this case the exquisitely erotic painting of the Duchess/Venus looking directly as us, her invited lover, hard nipples, touching herself, does the job no words would, to Twain’s chagrin; at the same time, one could readily imagine a tacky picture rendered delicate via choice words. Tit for tat – if you will forgive me putting it this way? geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Is opgenomen inPrijzen
Memoirs of an Egotist, Stendhal’s fragmentary autobiographical work, is alert, wry, and perpetually self-questioning. Through a series of apparently random impressions of the political, social, and artistic movements of the world around him, he imbues a range of human experience, from the mundane to the extraordinary, with the significance it deserves. Containing everything from delightful thumbnail sketches of his friends and colleagues, to lyrical remembrances of gardens and operas and tenderly amused descriptions of tea with London prostitutes, Memoirs of an Egotist is as startling as it is revealing. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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"Since it is much more of a fateful mistake for a young man to drop some unseemly remark than it is to his advantage to say something clever, posterity, probably less inane, will have no idea of how insipid polite society was."
Stendhal himself doesn’t appear as entirely likable either, at first droning on about his heartache, or about the mistresses he could have had if he only hadn’t been so distracted by said heartache, or rather: distracted by trying to conceal said heartache so he wouldn’t be ridiculed – or (what he considers far worse): so his lost love, the incomparable Métilde, wouldn’t be ridiculed. Or about missed friendships, or about the salons he could have joined if only he hadn't been so distrait.. Well, the title Souvenirs d'Égotisme doesn’t exactly suggest he intended to spare anyone – much less himself. - As you keep turning the pages, it’s exactly his critical eye, combined with his wry wit, that makes him more and more likable: "On arriving in a town I always ask: 1. Which are the 12 prettiest women; 2. Which are the 12 richest men; 3. Which is the man who could get me hanged." - It becomes clear to the reader how, under certain noxious circumstances, how hard it is to be even remotely likeable.
There’s an amusing anecdote where he’s visiting whores in a remote district of London. Half expecting to be murdered by their pimps, Stendhal and a friend sets out for Westminster Road. It's a three-storey house, and Stendhal comments that "In all my life I have never seen anything so small!", and also that if it hadn’t been for the boredom of after-dinner London and “the stimulus of possible danger” he wouldn’t have gone at all. The next day, upon not having been murdered, but rather having had a good time (or so it would seem), they send for an excellent lunch to treat both themselves and the young girls. And after going to see a play (Shakespeare, most likely) they return in the evening with champagne. This is one of the few times where Stendhal behaves with a degree of exuberance, but it may contain a hint of what it did to him to be able to forget, if only for a very brief time, his great love Métilde, (who he’d left in Milan, the relationship still unconsummated after years of courtship), along with "polite society" almost everywhere he went..
"I am animated, passionate, wild, and sincere to excess in friendship and in love, until the first cooling off. Then, from the wildness of a sixteen year old I pass, in the twinkling of an eye, to the machiavellianism of a fifty year old and, after a week, there’s nothing left but melting ice, a perfect chilliness."
Stendhal was a complex man in an era of extremes; of corruption, vain ambition, marriage for money (even the choice of a mistress or a lover was calculated by considering the advantages it could bring, or at least in most cases had an undertone of ambition), and, for anyone not entirely deprived of wit (as Stendhal would put it), an existence replete with boredom... "...if I had been more astute, I’d become disgusted to the point of nausea with women, and thus with music and painting like my two contemporaries. M.M. de la [Ro]sière and [Per]ochin. They are dessicated, disgusted with the world, philosophers. Instead of that, in everything concerning women, I have the good fortune to be as naive as at the age of twenty-five. – This is the reason why I’ll never blow out my brains in disgust at everything, out of boredom with life."
Stendhal had made sure this memoir wouldn’t be published until long after his death, so he gives himself a free reign in commenting on just about everything and everyone. For firsthand observations of early 19th century Paris (and France and Europe in general), Stendhal is a great and intriguing source. There’s really nothing else (that I know of) that quite compares to this when it comes to wry social commentary.
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