DOI Heft:
Hapgood, Norman: Henri Beyle
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21805#0216
212
Henri Beyle
and the apparently illogical nature of Stendhal’s thought. It will
take a little reflection to see how he gets so suddenly from industry
to patriotism in the following judgment, but the coherence of the
thought will be complete to the Beylian : “ It is rare that a young
Neapolitan of fourteen is forced to do anything disagreeable. All
his life he prefers the pain of want to the pain of work. The
fools from the North treat as barbarians the citizens of this country,
because they are not unhappy at wearing a shabby coat. Nothing
would seem more laughable to an inhabitant of Crotona than to
suggest his fighting to get a red ribbon in his button-hole, or to
have a sovereign named Ferdinand or William. The sentiment
of loyalty, or devotion to dynasty, which shines in the novels of
Sir Walter Scott, and which should have made him a peer, is as
unknown here as snow in May. To teil the truth, I don’t see
that this proves these people fools. (I admit that this idea is in
very bad taste.)” For himself, he hated his country, as he curtly
puts it, and loved none of his relatives. Patriotism, for which his
contempt is perhaps mixed with real hatred, is in his mind allied to the
most of all stupid tyrants, propriety, or, as he more often calls it,
opinion, his most violent aversion. Napoleon, he thinks, in
destroying the custom of cavaliere serviente simply added to the
world’s mass of ennui by ushering into Italy the flat religion of pro-
priety. He is full of such lucid observations as that the trouble with
opinion is that it takes a hand in private matters, whence comes
the sadness of England and America. To this sadness of the
moral countries and the moral people he never tires of referring.
His thesis carries him so far that he bunches together Veronese and
Tintoretto under the phrase, “ painters without ideal,” in whom
there is something dry, narrow, reasonable, bound by propriety ;
in a word, incapable of rapture. This referring to some general
Standard, this lack of directness, of fervour, of abandonment, is
illustrated
Henri Beyle
and the apparently illogical nature of Stendhal’s thought. It will
take a little reflection to see how he gets so suddenly from industry
to patriotism in the following judgment, but the coherence of the
thought will be complete to the Beylian : “ It is rare that a young
Neapolitan of fourteen is forced to do anything disagreeable. All
his life he prefers the pain of want to the pain of work. The
fools from the North treat as barbarians the citizens of this country,
because they are not unhappy at wearing a shabby coat. Nothing
would seem more laughable to an inhabitant of Crotona than to
suggest his fighting to get a red ribbon in his button-hole, or to
have a sovereign named Ferdinand or William. The sentiment
of loyalty, or devotion to dynasty, which shines in the novels of
Sir Walter Scott, and which should have made him a peer, is as
unknown here as snow in May. To teil the truth, I don’t see
that this proves these people fools. (I admit that this idea is in
very bad taste.)” For himself, he hated his country, as he curtly
puts it, and loved none of his relatives. Patriotism, for which his
contempt is perhaps mixed with real hatred, is in his mind allied to the
most of all stupid tyrants, propriety, or, as he more often calls it,
opinion, his most violent aversion. Napoleon, he thinks, in
destroying the custom of cavaliere serviente simply added to the
world’s mass of ennui by ushering into Italy the flat religion of pro-
priety. He is full of such lucid observations as that the trouble with
opinion is that it takes a hand in private matters, whence comes
the sadness of England and America. To this sadness of the
moral countries and the moral people he never tires of referring.
His thesis carries him so far that he bunches together Veronese and
Tintoretto under the phrase, “ painters without ideal,” in whom
there is something dry, narrow, reasonable, bound by propriety ;
in a word, incapable of rapture. This referring to some general
Standard, this lack of directness, of fervour, of abandonment, is
illustrated