Saturdays with Stendhal 3

From The Red and the Black, Volume I, Chapter 34, The Hotel de la Mole (free translation), and yes, I will manage to get it back to Saturdays!:

The abbe Pirard to Julien …  ”The Marquis does not like scribblers bloggers, I warn you; it is his one antipathy.  Know Latin, Greek if you can, the history of the Egyptians, of the Persians, and so forth; he will honour you and protect you as a scholar.  But do not go and write a single page in French blog post at Volokh Conspiracy or anywhere else, especially upon grave subjects, that are above your position in society; he would call you a scribbler blogger and take a dislike to you.  What, living in a great nobleman’s mansion, don’t you know the Duc de Castries’s saying about d’Alembert and Rousseau: ‘That sort of fellow wishes to argue blog about everything, and that other wishes to comment extravagantly and betimes rudely on everything at the blog, and neither has a thousand crowns a year?’”

Categories: Stendhal    

    12 Comments

    1. PersonFromPorlock says:

      I take it, then, that pajamas would be de trop?

    2. Kenneth Anderson says:

      Thanks – I really will get it back to Saturdays, as I don’t want to distract from Sunday Song Lyrics – Jonathan, apologies!

    3. troll_dc2 says:

      Prof. Anderson, do you have a thousand crowns?

    4. [insert here] delenda est says:

      Isn’t convention to underline or italicise the new text, as well as strike the deletions?

    5. lay says:

      good to know, thank you

    6. Kenneth Anderson says:

      Delenda: I figure people know the original well enough that I don’t need to do that :)

    7. Kenneth Anderson says:

      troll dc 2: I wonder what a thousand crowns would be in hypothetical purchasing power parity? I used to have some idea, based on some Stendhal article I read, but now I don’t recall. Anyway, whatever it is, after tuition payments, I’m sure I don’t!

    8. Crunchy Frog says:

      Shut up, he explained.

    9. Helian says:

      Stendhal belongs in the non-fiction section of the library. You’ll learn more about psychology from reading one of his novels than from all the tomes that have been churned out by the professionals since Freud.

    10. Kenneth Anderson says:

      Helian: could not have put it better myself!

    11. Volokh Conspiracy: Saturdays with Stendhal @ Helian Unbound says:

      [...] good to see my favorite author is still making the rounds at The Volokh Conspiracy. The incomparable French novelist and psychologist used to dream of his future readers, the Happy [...]