Comments on: Saturdays with Stendhal 1

By: Frances Smith

Frances Smith — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:40:20 +0000

Please do read the Richard Howard translation — vivid, yet sensitive and poetic. Also, his translations of Baudelaire are fine. (Full disclosure — I know him slightly but not enough to slant my judgment.)

By: Anderson

Anderson — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 15:56:06 +0000

Lighten up, Franc.

Stendhal is splendid. Just avoid the Richard Howard translations. The new Penguins and the Oxford World’s Classics are much better.

By: Kenneth Anderson

Kenneth Anderson — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 15:53:04 +0000

Francophobe: I share your pain because I am driven to do this by a mysterious but unalterable inner compulsion, but, alas, to quote the great Dogbert … “Well, you can’t please everyone.” :)

Don’t worry, it won’t be every Saturday, and it will give you an excuse to skip VC that day and do something healthy and out of doors and build up your immune system against ebola and bubonic plague and, following up on Stewart Baker, anthrax!

By: francophobe

francophobe — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:15:58 +0000

I HATE hate hate — loathe — Saturdays with Stendhal.

Nausea overcomes me as I type this.

If you have to resurrect the blogging equivalent of a putrefying corpse filled with five strains of ebola and the bubonic plague at least confine it to Opinio Juris!!!!!!

By: Randy

Randy — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 05:42:19 +0000

Tamarlane: “By the way, the quote seems to capture wittily and accurately an example of adolescent liberal/radical fantasizing.”

It makes me wonder — what would be an accurate example of adolescent conservative/radical fantasizing be? Dreaming of taking away liberties from everyone else?

By: metro1

metro1 — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:56:54 +0000

Interestingly, all of these books and authors are discussed in “The Club Dumas” by Arturo Perez-Reverte. That’s my favorite book. It was also made into a great movie: “The Ninth Gate” with Johnny Depp.

Anyway, my book club is going to be reading “The Red and The Black” … http://www.meetup.com/Alexandria-Book-Club/

By: Kenneth Anderson

Kenneth Anderson — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:34:34 +0000

tamerlane that’s an impressive kind of confusion!

By: tamerlane

tamerlane — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 01:38:14 +0000

Oh, never mind…..With extreme embarassment, I’ve just realized I confused The Charterhouse of Parma with The Red and the black.

By: tamerlane

tamerlane — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 01:23:00 +0000

but I don’t know which chapter it is from

It’s been about forty years since I last read The Red and the Black but I’m guessing that this is from near the beginning of the book where the young Julien runs away from home to join Napoleon and winds up wandering through the outskirts of Waterloo. By the way, the quote seems to capture wittily and accurately an example of adolescent liberal/radical fantasizing.

By: Martinned

Martinned — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 23:04:43 +0000

It's on Wikisource. (I would look up the quote myself, but I don't know which chapter it is from, not having an english e-edition.)

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Sun, 03 Jan 2010 23:03:53 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Eugene Volokh, Eugene Volokh. Eugene Volokh said: Saturdays with Stendhal 1: In the past, on other blogs, I have run a series called Sundays with Stendhal — quot.. http://bit.ly/8GrXRY [...]

By: Kenneth Anderson

Kenneth Anderson — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:27:54 +0000

I will when i’m not posting from my ipod – too hard to get to the online french ed.

By: Martinned

Martinned — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:01:57 +0000

Why not give the original French with the translation? Surely there are plenty of readers on VC who understand enough French to be able to appreciate the original?

By: Malvolio

Malvolio — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:45:52 +0000

“Julian fell asleep, dreaming of honors for himself, and human rights for everyone else.”

I’ve been thinking about this one a long time (well, an hour). FWTW, my thoughts, in order:

1. That’s nice of Julian.
2. “Liberties” is better than “human rights”, less bureaucratic.
3. Wait a minute — why does he want honors for himself, but not for others?
4. Of course, if everybody gets honored, no one does — it’s the Brad Bird problem.
5. So why doesn’t Julian want freedom for himself? Aren’t most dreams dreams of freedom?
6. Julian must be a shallow person.
7. Unless he already feels free…
8. Yeah, let’s go with that, it’s the least cynical.

“There is much less envy in American than in France, and much less wit.”
– Stendhal