NIETZSCHE AND STENDHAL

Aside from the usual suspects of Nietzsche’s affection, admired, and occasionally maligned, in groups or as individuals, Marie-Henri Beyle, aka Stendhal, occupies a special niche, rivaled by very few in importance. Nietzsche exalts him both as a psychologist, based primarily on Stendhal’s 1830 masterpiece of fiction Le Rouge et le Noir, and as an aesthete, based primarily on his 1822 non-fiction work De L’Amour. Although in Nietzsche’s psychological realm Fedor Dostoyevsky reigns supreme, Stendhal stands a most respectable second to the Russian genius. (“…Dostoevsky, the only psychologist, incidentally, from whom I had something to learn; he ranks among the most beautiful strokes of fortune in my life, even more than my discovery of Stendhal.” [In Götzen-Dämmerung: Skirmishes of an Untimely Man #45.])

Ironically Nietzsche lavishes quantitatively more praise on Stendhal the psychologist than on Dostoyevsky, and here are some of those laudatory instances:

“A final trait for the image of the free-spirited philosopher is contributed by Stendhal, whom, considering German taste, I do not want to fail to stress -- for he goes against the German taste. “Pour être bon philosophe,” says this last great psychologist, “il faut être sec, clair, sans illusion. Un banquier, qui a fait fortune, a une partie du caractère requis pour faire des découvertes en philosophie,--- c’est-à-dire, pour voir clair dans ce qui est.” (Jenseits 39.)

At this point it may be useful for me to quote myself from an autobiographical entry built around Jenseits 39, under the title Dry, Clear, Without Illusion, where I see Stendhal clash with Nietzsche in a paradoxical, yet definitely undecided battle:

“Nietzsche is quite obviously in love with Stendhal. But isn’t the Frenchman denying his philosopher label to Nietzsche, once we try to literally interpret his dictum? Who can be less dry, or more passionate, or more filled with all sorts of illusions than our dear Nietzsche? Philosophy for him is a continual non-stop inspiration, and prophetic speech of the highest order. To say that anything he says is in any way compatible with the person of a “banker who has made a fortune” can make a good paradox in the tradition of Oscar Wilde, but a grave and outrageous insult to Nietzsche himself, that is to the philosopher inside him. Take this quality of clarity, for instance. Even this is a very different quality in the philosopher than in Stendhal’s banker. And finally, if Stendhal has nailed it on the head, what then, is Zarathustra, and whatever on earth can he have in common with the concept of sec which Stendhal makes the cornerstone of his thought in the quote? Mind you, I am talking about the true philosopher… My view of the philosopher then, is a clash of the opposites, the meeting of Stendhal and contra-Stendhal in the person of the philosopher.”

Returning to our quote from Jenseits 39, it is almost hilarious how standard history of literature calls Stendhal the first great psychologist, whereas our Nietzsche calls him “the last.” I wish that Nietzsche had explained his judgment, in terms of who can be called Stendhal’s predecessor psychologists: from the first to the penultimate…

But Nietzsche persists in calling Stendhal, or Henri Beyle, as below, the last, rather than the first. We continue now with Jenseits #254:

(By way of contrast to the German inexperience and innocence in voluptate psychologica which is none too distantly related to the tediousness of German company, and as the most consummate expression of a typically French curiosity and inventive talent in this domain of delicate thrills, Henri Beyle may be noted; that remarkable anticipatory and precursory human being who ran with a Napoleonic tempo through his Europe, through several centuries of the European soul, as an explorer and discoverer of this soul--- it required two generations to catch up with him in any way, to figure out long again a few of the riddles which tormented and enchanted him, this old Epicurean and question mark of a man-- who was France’s last great psychologist.)

Now, instead of moving on textually/chronologically further within the Jenseits expanse, we shall proceed thematically, with yet another Nietzsche testimony to Stendhal the great psychologist. Here is Ecce Homo: “The Case of Wagner” #3.

“…And when I occasionally praise Stendhal as a deep psychologist, I have encountered professors at German universities who asked me to spell his name.”

With this last mention of Stendhal’s psychological brilliance I am ready to stop the flow of these particular illustrations. (Or am I? Yet another mention of Stendhal the psychologist will still come near the end of this entry!)

Our next topic is Stendhal the aesthete, and here we shall limit ourselves just to two Nietzschean passages. One is from the Genealogie de Moral: Third Essay, Section 6:

“Schopenhauer used the Kantian version of the aesthetic problem, although he did not view it with Kantian eyes. Kant thought he was honoring art, when among the predicates of beauty he emphasized those, which establish the honor of knowledge: impersonality and universality. This is not a place to inquire if it was a mistake; all I wish to stress is that Kant, like all philosophers, instead of seeing the aesthetic problem from the point of view of the artist, the creator, considered art and the beautiful purely from the point of view of the spectator, and unconsciously introduced spectator into the concept beautiful. It would not have been so bad had the spectator been sufficiently familiar to the philosophers of beauty, namely, as a great personal fact and experience. But I fear, the reverse has always been the case, so they have offered us definitions, in which a lack of experience reposes in the shape of a fat worm of error. ‘That is beautiful,’ proclaims Kant, ‘which gives us pleasure without interest.’ Without interest! Compare this with the definition once framed by a genuine spectator and artist Stendhal, who once called the beautiful “une promesse de bonheur.” He rejects the one point, which Kant has stressed: le desinteressement. Who is right? If our aestheticians rule in Kant’s favor that under the spell of beauty one can even view undraped female statues without interest, one may laugh a little at their expense. The experiences of artists are more interested,--- and Pygmalion was not necessarily an unaesthetic man.

And here we come to Schopenhauer who stood much closer to the arts than Kant, and yet did not free himself from the spell of the Kantian definition. He interpreted ‘without interest’ in an extremely personal way, on the basis of one of his most regular experiences.

Schopenhauer speaks with great assurance of the aesthetic contemplation as it counteracts sexual interestedness. He glorifies this liberation from the will as the great merit and utility of the aesthetic condition. Thus aesthetics calms the will, creating ‘the painless condition that Epicurus praised as the highest good and the condition of the gods.’ (World as Will and Representation). However, Stendhal, a no less sensual, but happier person says that ‘the beautiful promises happiness,’ that is, arouses the will, not calms it.

Unlike the Kantian definition, Schopenhauer, like Stendhal, sees the beautiful from an interested point. And to return to our question: what does it mean when a philosopher pays homage to the ascetic ideal?, the answer is: he wants to gain release from torture.

The second excerpt on Stendhal the aesthete comes from Der Wille zur Macht #105:

“The preponderance of music in the romantics of 1839 and 1840. Delacroix. Ingres, a passionate musician (cult of Gluck, Haydn, Beethoven and Mozart) said to his students in Rome: ‘Si je pouvais vous rendre tous musicians, vous y gagneriez comme peintres’; also Horace Vernet, with a special passion for Don Giovanni (as Mendelssohn testifies in 1831); also Stendhal, who said of himself: ‘Combien de lieues ne ferais-je pas a pied, et combien de jours de prison ne me soumetterais‑je pas pour entendre Don Juan ou le Matrimonio Segreto: et je ne sais pour quelle autre chose je ferais cet eport.’ At that time he was 56.”

Now, here is one of the most compelling Nietzschean testimonies on the importance of Stendhal for his life and thought. This is from Ecce Homo. Why I am so Clever #3, where Stendhal the psychologist still shines:

“Stendhal, one of the most beautiful accidents of my life--- for whatever marks an epoch in it came my way by accident, and never through someone’s recommendation --- is truly invaluable with his anticipatory eye of a psychologist, with his knack for the facts which is reminiscent of the greatest of factual men (ex ungue Napoleonem) ; and finally not least as an honest atheist --- a species that is both rare and almost impossible to discover in France — with all due respect for Prosper Mérimée.

Perhaps I am even envious of Stendhal? He robbed me of the best atheistic joke which I of all people might have made: ‘ God’s only excuse is that He does not exist.’

I myself have said somewhere: What has been the greatest objection to existence so far? God.”

And finally a couple more Nietzschean references to Stendhal, which by no means exhaust the complete list of such references, some of which are fleeting and perhaps superfluous to the purpose of this entry, that has already been abundantly served.

From Jenseits 256. Observe the illustrious company where Stendhal belongs, courtesy of Nietzsche:

“Owing to the morbid estrangement which the nationality-craze has induced and still induces among the nations of Europe, owing also to the short-sighted and hasty-handed politicians, who with the help of this craze, are at present in power, and do not suspect to what extent the disintegrating policy they pursue must necessarily be only an interlude policy-- owing to all this and much else that is altogether unmentionable at present, the most unmistakable signs that Europe wishes to be one, are now overlooked, or arbitrarily and falsely misinterpreted. With all the more profound and large-minded men of this century, the real general tendency of the mysterious labor of their souls was to prepare the way for that new synthesis, and tentatively to anticipate the European of the future; only in their simulations, or in their weaker moments, in old age perhaps, did they belong to the ‘fatherlands’ --- they only rested from themselves when they became ‘patriots.’ I think of such men as Napoleon, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal (sic!), Heinrich Heine, Schopenhauer: it must not be taken amiss if I also count Richard Wagner among them…”

And lastly from Ecce Homo again, namely, from Unzeitgemässen#2:

“At bottom all I had done was to put one of Stendhal’s maxims into practice : he advises one to make one’s entrance into society by means of a duel. And how well had I chosen my opponent!--- the foremost German free spirit.” (An easy to get reference to Wagner.)

In conclusion of this large entry, we need to ask the natural question: what is it about Stendhal that attracted Nietzsche so much? This question may appear asinine to those who have read and admired Le Rouge et le Noir, until they come to realize that it is a rhetorical question. The real one ought to be: how come that the works of Stendhal are so little known to the modern generation? There is a good reason to study Stendhal’s undoubtedly eminent contribution to world culture, and Nietzsche’s cue gives a helpful hint to that.