MIMESIS THE REP With by Badward W. Said18 DE LA MOLE ’s novel Le Rouge et le Noir jung man, son of an ned ‘ated petty bourgeois from the Franche Comte, is conducted by a series of from the seminary at Besingon, where he has been studying is a girl of ive, and 80 atogant that her awn pos dawning of her passion for he Julien 2, chapter 14 avec Julien, dans la bibliothéque tern procis de tout & coup, diner tous les jours avec Ta marquise, stce un de mes devoirs, ou extce une ise. Jamais jen, qui, depuis quinze ans, fait une co asidue, n/a pul'ebteni pour son nevew M. Tanbeau ‘St pour moi, monseur, la partie la plus pénible de mon Jesmfennuyais moins a seminar. Je voi biler quelque mademoiselle de La Mol coutumée &'amabilité des amis de dormir. De grice, obtenez-moi la pe Liabbé, vértable parvenu, était fort se and seigne sprendre ce sentiment pa Julien le, comme ce viel abbe. Dieu! quill ext laid 454 IN THE MOTEL DE LA MOLE A dine, Julien n'sait pas egarder mademoiselle de La Mole, ‘mais ell ent la bonté de lui adresse la parole. Ce jaurla, on at. tendait beaucoup de monde, elle Vengagea a restr. (One morning while the AbbE was: “For me, Monsieur, it s the most painful pat of my pos ‘Nothing atthe seminary bored me so much, Feven see Madi selle dela Mole yawning sometimes, yet she must be to the amiabilities of the guests of this house. Iam in falling asleep. Do me the favor of getting me permission to cat 4 fortysou dinner at some inn.” ‘The Abbé, 2 true parvenn, was extremely conscious o honor of dining with a noble lord. While he was trying to in culate this sentiment into Julien, slight sound made themn tum “Mole listening. He blushed. She hnad come fora book and had heard everything; she began to feel «certain esteem for Julien He was not born on his knees, ike that ought. God, how ugly be is! [At dinner Julien did not date to look at Mademoiselle de a Mole, but she condescended to speak to him, A number of guests were expected that day, she asked him to stay...) ‘The ene, a5 1 sad, is designed to prepare for & passionate and ex tremely tragic love intrigue. Its function and its psychological value ‘we shall not here discuss; they lie outside of our subject. Wha teress usin the scene is this: it would be almost incamprehs without a most accurate and detailed knowledge of the politial situa. tion, the socal stratification, and the economic circumstances of petiectly definite historical moment, namely, that in which France found isl ly, the novel bears the subtitle, Chronique de 1830, Even the boredom which reigns inthe dining oom and salon ofthis noble house is no ordinary bore- ‘dom, It does not arise from the fortuitous personal dullness of the people who are brought together there among them thete are highly 455educated, witty, and sometimes important people, and the master of the house is intelligent and amiable. Rather, we are confronted, in ther boredom, by a phenomenon politically and ideologically charac. teristic of the Restoration period, In the seventeenth century, and ‘even more in the eighteenth, the corresponding salons were anything Dut boring. But the inadequately implemented attempt which the Bourbon regime made to restore Dy events, creates, among its adherent an atmosphere of pure convent of constraint and lack of freedom, against which the 1nd good persons involved are powerless, In these salons the things terest everyone~the politcal and religious problems of the pr and consequently most of the subject of i the very recent past—could not be diseussed, cussed only in official phrases so mendacious that @ man of taste and tact would rather avoid them. How different from the intellectual daring of the famous eighteenth century salons, which, to be sue, did not dream ofthe dangers to their own existence which they were un lashing! Now the dangers are known, an life is governed bythe feat thatthe catastrophe of 1793 might be repeated. Ae these people are ‘conscious that they no longer themselves believe in the thing they rep- resent, and that they ate bound to be defeated in any public argument, they choose to talk of nothing but the weather, musi, and court gos sip. In adtion, they are obliged to accept as alies snobbish and cor- rupt people from among the newlyrich bourgeoisie, who, with the tunashamed baseness of their ambition and with thei ear for their il gotten wealth, completely vtiate the atmosphere of society. So much redom, tions long since made obsolete the oficial and raling clases, hat he and the former “airector of his seminary, the Abbé Vitara, ate presenta all inthe house re only to be understood inte 's passionate and such a his friend Fouguet proposes to n of petty-bourgeos origin cam attain 456 ly through the all powerful Church, he become a hypocrite; and his great toa situation of command the direct pass me to burst forth at decisive moments, One such moment the pasage before us, when Julien confides jon to the Abbé lectual arogance and a petiority hardly becoming ina young ecclesistic and nd is his words make an hly the honor of sit- ‘esteemed and hence disapproves fate secretary tudes, and relationships ofthe drama hen, are very lasely connected with contemporary historical circum: tially to situate the tragica positon (as here that of Jul 457rent with the same penetet rot one of the minor characters y emphasized: itis not always wholl the course ofthe action and is set forth in fr too great the principal theme; but perhaps in a inal re- mn Stendhal would have achieved ously took p the consequent conv and which ‘much faster effects, andthe changes which it produced in practical daly life within a comparatively extensive terstory, for 458 ce made tremendous prog: ‘only permits us to prophesy a unification of human Dut has ina cestain sense aleady achieved man of Keen independent and cou ae often foreful and so that he was compelled to come to terms with i way which no one had done befoce him. Vien the Revolution broke out Stendhal was a boy of sx; when he ive city of Grenoble and his reactionary, solidly bourgeois 459IN THE HOTEL DE LA MoLE also became, it appears, a usful administrative ofcial anda reliable, cold blooded organizer who did not lose his calm even in. danger When Napoleon's fall threw Stenc tysecond year. The fs ‘cateet was over, Thencef claims him. He can go where and so long asthe sui where he h Paris, and there he lives for alone, and with very slender means. After the July Revolution his fiends get him a postin the diplomatic service; since the Austrians refuse him an exequatut for Tris consul tothe little post of Cvita Vecchia; it isa dreary place to lve, and there are those into trouble if he prolongs his visits to Rome un nd afew yeas in Pars on leave~ iat is, as one of his protectors is Minister of Foreign Air, is seriously lin Givita Vecchia ands given another leave in Paris; he dies therein 1843, smitten by apoplexy in the street, not yet sats This is the second hal of bs {uites the reputation of being awit liable man; during this period, he begins to i, on Italy and Italian art, on love; during the fist flow ‘contributed in his way) that 's police; he goes to thout a profesion, tively poor, he Became awate, with al the sting ofthat knowledge, that he belonged nowhere. For the first time, the socal world around him ‘became a probe 1¢ was diferent from other men, I now borne easily and proudly, doubtless now fst became the sess and finally the recurring y istic writing grew out of in the post Napoleonic world and his consciousness hat he did not belong to it and had no place in it. Discomfort in the given world and inability to become part of iti, to be sure, charac: teristic of sm and it is probable that Stendhal tnad something ofthat even in his youth; there is something of itn his ital disposition, and the course of his youth can only have ‘which, so to speak, harmonized viewpoint of his later development, iewpoint of 1832, he overstressed such motifs of individualistic isolation. Its, in any ease, tthe motifs and expressions of his isolation and his prob ‘ety are wholly diferent from the coresponding 4 bent for practical afats ta sensual enjoyment of life as silence du bonheur) are ne ceneial, more conerete, mone dependent upon ‘ety and human creations (Cimarosa, Mozart, Shakespeare, Italian att) than those of the Promeneur Solitaire, Not until success and pleasure ‘began to slip avay from him, not until practical circumstances theat ‘ened to cat the ground from under his fet, did the society of his time become problem ands at home in the social world he encountered, which did not appreciably change du time; he rose in it witho happier or mote reconciled to it, while it 2p changed, Stendhal lved while one earthquake after another shook the foundations of society; one ofthe earthquakes jarred everyday course oflfe prescribed for men of his station, ung him, 461