Biography

The happy few

Item: With Stendhal
Author: Colin Nettelbeck

by Colin Nettelbeck •

June 2010, issue no. 322

With Stendhal by Simon Leys

Black Inc., $19.95 pb, 144 pp

Biography

The happy few

by Colin Nettelbeck •

June 2010, issue no. 322

As Stendhal did with The Red and the Black (1830) and The Charterhouse of Parma (1839), Simon Leys dedicates his With Stendhal to ‘the happy few’. In both cases, humility is the motivation, rather than affectation or coyness. Henri Beyle (1783–1842) – Stendhal’s real name – was committed to his writing, but he really had no idea that his novels would become masterworks of Western literature, or that his protagonists Julien Sorel and Fabrice del Dongo would come to be seen as archetypal figures of the Romantic era. He would have been astonished to learn that beylisme – denoting a melding of passionate energy and cynical individualism – had become a common noun in French.

Colin Nettelbeck

By this contributor

Colin Nettelbeck is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Melbourne, where he held the A.R. Chisholm Chair of French. He taught previously at the University of California (Berkeley) and Monash University. He has written extensively about twentieth-century and contemporary French literature, cinema, and cultural history, with special focus on the French experience of World War II. His most recent book is Dancing with de Beauvoir: Jazz and the French, published by Melbourne University Press in 2004. His essay ‘Kneecapper: a Trip to Happiness’ (published in the Autumn 2011 Meanjin Quarterly) was shortlisted for the 2010 Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay. He was awarded second prize in the 2012 Calibre Prize for ‘Now They’ve Gone’.