Life of Henri Brulard

The Vie of Henri Brulard is an autobiographical work written by the French writer Stendhal. It is beside the Journal autobiographical work most important of this author. Written in 1835, it was published only in 1890. The title refers to the true name of Stendhal: Henri Beyle. But by refusal of the paternal name, it adopted that of Brulard.

Project of Stendhal

Which is the project of Stendhal in the Vie of Henri Brulard ? Stendhal seeks before very knowing itself. It is this only will which underlies its literary project. He however at all does not claim to make an objective and impartial work. He is not an observant cold of his existence: in each page anger against those bubbles which made it suffer during its childhood.

There exists one second motivation (nevertheless less important than the first). Written Stendhal because the writing is source of pleasure: pleasure of creating a work, pleasure of writing with the true direction of the term, but also pleasure of being able to be read by loved beings constituting a kind of moral elite (the “ happy few ”). And also, finally, pleasure of reconsidering with its life passed, for example in chapter 10.

How to know oneself?

To know, Stendhal will carry out a true genealogy of Ego. It is not any more by the notation of the daily facts told at the time, as in its Journal' , but by a “archeology of Ego” that Stendhal wants to work. It will seek in its childhood the source of its character traits:

Stendhal hates monarchy and the religion: in the Red and the Black and Chartreuse of Parma, it traces a sour portrait of the Restauration and aristocrats. He explains this hatred by the dislike which its tutor the Abbé Raillane and its aunt Séraphie inspired to him, like by the sadness of its childhood passed in an aristocratic medium.

Stendhal was in love with the Italy, as its emotion when it evokes its arrival in Milan, in chapter 56 shows it. This love would have as a source its love for his/her mother and all the maternal branch, Gagnon. Its great-aunt explained to him that Gagnon were originating in Italy (chapter 8). Stendhal recognizing only maternal filiation, it thus feels Italian.

Stendhal was for a long time victim of “espagnolism” i.e. of a tendency to be incredibly impassioned. This love of the honor and heroism is reported to chapter 31, where Stendhal known as to have regretted not being itself beaten in duel, and makes him hate all that is low. This tendency comes to him from its large Elisabeth great-aunt (see chapters 8 and 21).

It hates hypocrisy because it was incarnated as well by the Raillane Abbot, as by his aunt Séraphie and her father.

Stendhal always had a passion for the exact reasoning and the Mathématiques. This passion comes to him from its hatred of the Abbot Raillane, “enemy of any logic” (chapter 7), and of its desire to leave Grenoble by mathematics (chapter 8).

Stendhal adored energy, passion, youth, and this love is incarnated in the heroes of its novels, like the Abbess of Castro, whose heroes are young people. It indeed grew in a medium which was made up only of enemy adults of any passion.

Nature of the memory

This genealogy of ego rests on memories which do not constitute a succession of end to end put events, but of the feelings which have a deeply visual aspect, marked by recurring expressions before the evocation of a memory, as “I see”, but especially, by the massive presence of sketch in the manuscript of the Life of Henri Brulard .

Stendhal does not represent the past as monolithic but insists on the difficult advance of the memory: he thus explains in chapter 13, why sometimes of memories it misses whole pieces.

Life of Henri Brulard like autobiography:

As for any verbal production a study of the processes of writing of the Life of Henri Brulard is possible. It is even necessary if one does not want to reduce this work to a psychoanalysis.

One of the great questions is that of the properties of the kind to which belongs the Life of Henri Brulard . The great characteristic of the autobiography is that it rests on a kind of “autobiographical Pacte” to take again the expression of Philippe Lejeune. Stendhal seeks thus, as of the first chapter, to establish a relationship of trust between him and its reader, by unceasingly affirming his will to reach the truth and to avoid any artifice.

Moreover, it is necessary that the reader knows that the author actually wanted to write an autobiography the declarations of intents of the author are not enough. The autobiography is not characterized by formal properties (in a fiction the narrator can affirm the veracity of the brought back facts) but by the fact that the author and the reader believe that the autobiography tries to have a referential value (it does nothing but try it: the author can acknowledge to be able involuntarily to be mistaken what Stendhal does besides).

The autobiography is let include/understand only if one integrates concepts coming from the “Pragmatique”: it rests on certain waiting (makes an attempt to bring back veracious facts) which it causes at the reader.

Stendhal and the Psychoanalysis:

By the topics approached Stendhal seems to practice a Psychanalyse (incestueux love of the mother, hatred “oedipienne” of the father, whose portrait that the author traces makes an incarnation of the authority). But especially by the idea that it is the childhood which explains all, Stendhal seems a Freud before the letter: until him one regarded this age as a vegetative age.

References

Yves Ansel, Philippe Berthier, Michael Nerlich ED., Dictionary of Stendhal , Paris, Champion, 2003,776p.
Stendhal, Life of Henry Brulard: written by itself , ED. diplomatic presented and annotated by Gerald Rannaud, Paris, Klincksieck, 1996,3 volumes, 2615p.
Serge Serodes, Life of Henry Brulard , Paris, Hake, 1977,95p.

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