The Red and the Black. Collector's Edition in Full Leather. The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written Series

I must say that learning about the 19th century French history helped me to understand the historical context of this book, which definitely added more depth to and appreciation for the psychology of the characters. This if kind of French/male version of Vanity Fair--social commentary on the ironies and hypocrisies of the culture--an ambitious social climber from low class, high class women whose lives are dying from boredom, churches and politics all exploiting one another for self preservation and promotion. And the worst obstacle in this game is genuine human feelings which ultimately lead to destruction. Most chapters have poignant quotes that add dark, satirical, often very funny delight to the following stories, "Everyday events are so grotesque they keep yo from seeing the very real misfortune of our passions--Barnave", "Words have been given to men in order to hide their thoughts--R.P. Malagrida" After this book, I will definitely plan on reading Voltaire.

The book is about the life and adventures of Julien Sorel, and it is also about his thought processes. Never wanting to have been born into the lower class, Julien has a constant dialog with himself about the ulterior motives of the people he meets and deals with. Sometimes his observations are penetrating, other times they are laughable. But he is always thinking, thinking, thinking. And of course as we learn to think like Julien, we begin to see the world for what it is - filled with role-playing tricksters, some of them more sincere at times than others. A sobering account of our world for, even if we think the modern world is not so class conscious, it is still filled with the same tricks and games. Those who play it best win. Julien is not so lucky to extricate himself from the corner he has painted himself in; we may be luckier. A cautionary tale. Don't get so caught up in your "game" that you can't recognize it for what it is and be able to leave it at will.

An interesting tale of the rise and fall of Julien Sorel, a carpenter's son who elevates his social standing , with the help of the clergy, to become the secretary of a Parisian marquis. Julien is cunning and ambitious, constantly suspicious of his wealthy employers, manages to assimilate well to noble drawing rooms, but loses his focus when love intervenes. The novel is complicated by a multitude of political references which, even with the help of lengthy footnotes, are difficult to grasp unless you're a French historian. Also, Julien's monastery stay is a dull diversion from the main story and adds little to the reader's overall impression. Very dense, sometimes not an easy read, but philosophical, thought-provoking, and definitely passionate.

This book looks at things from the main character's viewpoint, and that main character is a villain through and through. Julien Sorel is wonderfully portrayed in this masterpiece that was written in the very early nineteenth century. In the book, Stendahl, analyzes the psychological undercurrents of Sorel's personality. He shows clearly how struggle and temptation helped shaped Sorel's twisted nature. For anyone who likes to read modern psychological thrillers like Barbara Vine or Minette Walters, I hightly recommend this book. It could have been the handbook for psychological thrillers, actually. Don't miss this complex thriller.

Stendhal's masterpiece 'The Red and the Black' is a perfectly woven portrait of the tragically rigid impositions of the church and society on man. Julien Sorel, the young and brilliant protagonist, falls in love first with a provincial wife, and later a Parisian wife of a Marquise. A wonderfully conceived depiction of the arbitrary forces which prevent the individual from happiness. Stendhal is a clunky stylist in comparison to Flaubert, but his characters may be more complex and interesting. 'The Red and the Black' often transcends the somewhat belabored arguments leveled against the church; his characters breathe with life and miraculously rich developments and contradictions. A true masterpiece of French realism.

This story reminds me of The Seagull by Chekhov because it can be read as a drama or, if you take a step back and laugh at the characters instead of empathizing with them, as a comedy. Chekhov described his depressing play as a comedy.
Julien Sorel is a poor young peasant in France. He becomes a tutor for a rich family, so of course he has a love affair with his employer's wife. The next time he works for a rich family it is the virgin daughter he falls in love with. The book is French, don't forget. Similar to romance in Proust, the lady despises Julien for loving her, but falls in love with him when she thinks he loves someone else. The stakes are raised when his earlier lover, the married woman, returns to the story to break up his new relationship. Is it hatred? Is it love? Right here we have to break off because things start happening fast and we can't ruin the ending for you.
I like happy endings. I wouldn't compare this one to a Yankee fan watching the Yanks win the World Series. Be prepared to chuck it all and just laugh.

Stendhal's hero is the low-born but intelligent and ambitious Julien, son of a country carpenter. Julien is effectively shut out of power in French Restoration society by virtue of his lowly status.

But Julien is a scheming and calculating kind of guy. He does what it takes to get as far up the ladder as possible. This means stuff like seducing powerful women and hanging around with important bishops.

Stendhal, perhaps reflecting his literary genius, does not allow us (the readers) to formulate a definitive impression of Julien. We see him alternately as a despicable cad, an ambitious over-achiever, and a forlorn lovesick boy.

The book is about the anguish that Julien faces with regard to "how he should live his life." It is an important book to read if you are interested in the conflict between career advancement and personal integrity. This is a conflict that many of us face and, as such, the book is very relevant in today's world.

Stendhal wrote the book in about 1830 (the exact date is controversial) at the time of the Restoration in France. During this period, the nobility are once again in control, but are under constant threat from the masses who orchestrated the orginal revolution in 1789. Memories of the Napoleonic era are also fresh in everyone's mind.

It is a modestly challenging read. Hey, its French romantic (not postmodern) so how difficult can it be?! It offers an interesting glimpse into 19th-century French Restoration society. Go for it! I also recommend The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, which explores the same theme of career ambition. There are a lot of similarities, in fact, between Julien and Rand's hero Howard Roark.

I would be interested if any other the store reviewers can comment on the similarities between Stendhal's Julien and Rand's Roark.

I really enjoyed this book. Unlike many reviewers, I feel the book does transcend time. American people and culture today, computers and all, are a lot like those in Stendhal's 19th century France.

The main characters strike me as real, and quite complex. Julien is a typical adolescent/ young adult: Idealistic, searching and unsure of himself. To me, it is amazing to what how the world interacts with and alters his self-image. Mathilde is equally interesting. She reminds me of a flighty alternative girl, looking for a dream of simmering romance. And MME de Renal is a wonderful, believable woman, falling in love late in life, victim of the missing husband syndrome.

Like people today, Stedhal's characters are a bundle of contradictions. Is Julien a villain, an angel, a self-serving climber or a man truly in love, searching for his higher self? Aloof or loveable? Is MME de Renal a devout, moral patroness, devoted to her family, or the vilest of adulators, ready to turn her back on duty for the simmer of love? Is Mathilde submissive, or arrogant and dominant?

The answer to all questions is yes. We are all divided.

Be honest with yourself for a minute. Aren't people sometimes cruel, and sometimes kind; Sometimes, honest, sometimes mildly deceitful, telling white lies, and sometimes bold-faced liars? Since Stendhal is faithful to this, and does not give us character in black and white, he has produced a masterpiece.

One last point: You do not need a lot of historical background to understand the author's critique of society. The basic overview laid out in the introduction, and my college course in Western Civ gave me the jist of the cultural goings-on. I even found French culture around the time of Stendhal remarkably similar to our own. The emphasis on external instead of the internal (Brittany Spears, try as she might, is not near as powerful as Bob Dylan, though a good deal more polished and wealthy) strikes home. In our culture, all heroism is gone, and we are left with shallow clubbers, athletes and supermodels as role models. How like Stendhal's effete social elite.

I highly recommend this book because it does transcend time.

Readers in my generation grew up with some pretty awful translations, with even the French and Russian writers often coming off sounding Victorian. We should be grateful for Burton Raffel and other currently active translators (including Richard Pavear and Larissa Volokonsky, who got the vernacular back into Dostoievski) for changing that. It was Raffel who finally enabled me to read and savorDon Quixote, and I'll always thank him for that. Now I also owe him thanks for making Stendahl's uneven but nonetheless great tale of Julien Sorell so engaging and readable.
If any reader out there can make any sense of the mystifying jacket photograph on this book, please share that sense with us. What does it have to do with the book? More to the point, what IS it? Do the torso and the oversized hand belong to the same person, or what?
But, hey, the Modern Library gave us a full cloth binding on this one, so we can forgive the jacket.

Hypocrisy, or "frontin," is one of the least respected vices today. However, hypocrisy was much worse during the Victorian age, where its exaggerated concern for the external appearance of virtue led to insincerity and deception. This concept is brilliantly exemplified in The Red and the Black, a magnificent representative of 19th century French literature. Stendhal's claim to immortality lies in his perceptive writing that balances social commentary with psychological insights of the main characters, the arrogant yet clueless Julien, the virtuous Madam de Renal, and the impulsive Mademoiselle Mathilde de la Mole.

What I found most interesting was the portrayal of "hypocrisy" according to the protagonist's perception and as the overall characteristic of society during the Restoration period. The trouble is, Julien despises hypocrisy, but at the same time, he realizes that in order to acquire success he has to give in and be hypocritical. He holds a romantic view of Napoleon, but conservativism has forbidden such sentiments. Since the only possible route for the son of a bourgeois is the priesthood, Julien learns Latin in order to impress Chelan, the local priest, and this is only the first of a long series of insincere acts that helps him to get ahead. Authenticity is cheap.

Rousseau, one of Stendhal's philosophy muses, claims the source of hypocrisy is society itself because it is artificial and its members develop deformed natures. Society is deemed artificial because it imposes inequality among its members, especially when inherited social rank and inherited rank have nothing to do with the innate abilities of the person. Also, the artificiality of language creates a gap between the ideals and behavior in the real world. These ideals such as beauty, freedom, happiness, are all impossible to actualize in the real world because they are indefinable. There is nothing in the real world to correspond to these abstract ideals. The pursuit of abstractions in a socially invented hierarchy of wealth and rank causes psychological damage to people. One cannot truly live in an artificial world and escape the charge of hypocrisy.

Stendhal carefully showed how hypocrisy could betray a secret truth of character, and more importantly how the phony emphasis on piety actually drained all passion from the interactions of people in Parisian society.

Other reviewers have focused on 19th century France, culture, power structure, etc. But let me tell you, this is just one hell of a soap opera. Julien, Mathilde, and Mm. Renal must have either read "The Rules"-or perhaps they invented them. A remarkably modern take on male-female behavior, especially when both parties are "interested" but want to play "hard to get".
This book was a lot of fun and the ability to learn about a time and place different from my own was a bonus.

Stendhal's The Red and the Black Norton Critical Edition ,
Translated by Robert M. Adams, edited by Susanna Lee

Do not buy this book.
These problems make it unreadable and not in correspondence
with the French text:
1.The translator actually takes the liberty of the addition of a
minor character (The Dominican maid) in order to explain how
Julien has learned Creole in this edition, when, in fact Julien
Speaks here in Gascon, a dialect spoken in his native Franche-Comte.
As a result of this, he misses the double-entendre of "get out"
(pejorative) as opposed to escape. A footnote that explained the Spanish
domination of Franche-Comte over the centuries would have been in order.
2. The English is often unreadable. An early example is the reference to the
"shearings" that remain after trees are cut.In English one shears sheep and
prunes trees, and "shearings" is not a word.
3. Words are changed so that their metaphoric connotations are misssed.
For example, "eagle" is substituted for "sparrow hawk"
and "puppies" for "hunting dogs." Both French words are associated with Julien
in relation to Mme. Renal. And his predatory relation to her and her 3 little "sparrows"
(children.)
4.There are frequent mistranslations, one near the end of the book,
in which Mathilde tells Julien what she "does not yet know" when the French reads that
it is something of which she has no doubt.
In addition, bad translation leaves the reader with a hazy impression, as where Julien
is described as," in the narrator's opinion, as a fine plant." One could have translated
this French as "Following me it was a beautiful vegetable." But a good translation would
have revealed the narrator's extremely positive feelings for Julien and his view that Julien
is suffering from a mental disorder that would have been cured in time, leaving him an
abundantly kind man.
5. There are many interesting printing errors, such as "conversation" for "conversion."
To conclude this edition is irretrievable, and needs to be retranslated and edited. It is an
insult to a great novel!
Cynthia C. Kegel, Ph.D.

Mari-Henri Beyle wrote the French classic "The Red and The Black" about an ambitious and purportedly bright young man of very Latin temperament from the countryside of Eastern France under the pen name of Stendhal in 1829. Burton Raffel's translation is mostly readable, using great vocabulary and with strong verbs he preserves the long sentences of the original's detailed descriptions. It needs to be read carefully as it reflects the book's difficulty, the perfect one not existing.

So, the main character, Julien Sorel, chooses a religious career (the Black) as family tutor, short-term seminarian and property administrator over a dream career in the army (the Red), after Napoleon's, because he wants to have power and for presently possible pecuniary gains. He posesses a variety of extremes: he's "an expert latinist", yet, "together with his fiery soul, Julien posessed one of those stunning memories so often linked to stupidity." Sensitive, "Beginning in childhood, he had moments of exaltation", but to his demise also slender and with "delicate features" and "huge black eyes", he naturally feels able to entertain the concept of "being introduced to all the pretty ladies of Paris" because he feels he can relate, idealistically again, to sociable, intelligent, spirited, beautiful, rich women. Really, he desires to please and finds himself more committed than he can take, and he reveals his past and his weaknesses and inexperience, as the young third son of a carpenter.

Sometimes, Julien shows his immaturities. His two lovers have a great hold over him, these become the forces in his life that not even the eventual career in the army as lieutenant can impede. Mademoiselle de la Mole, Mathilde, his Paris employer's daughter becomes "absolute mistress of both his happiness and his imagination" in a game about willpower in which he even says to himself: "I've been able to preserve my dignity. I've not said I love her." When he makes Mathilde pregnant and decides to marry her, his former love Mme de Renal writes to reveal their affair to the Marquis de la Mole, Mathilde's father, who, although had become attached to Julien "like a fine spaniel" decides he does not want him as son-in-law, and Julien shoots Mme de Renal in church. Their affair was very real however, and while in prison, he falls in love with Mme de Renal one more time. She, too, had remained in love with her young former children's tutor "completely lost in her profound remorse" and she had spent much time thinking of "this unusual being, who once he had come into her life had turned it upside down" and having moods after he had had to leave because of her status as Mayor's wife, paying her a last late night visit. He is sentenced to death, although she does not die from the shooting.

More translations, for example, on Mathilde, Mlle Marquise de la Mole, Julien's intelligent blue-eyed eighteen-year-old convent-educated love: "It is always said that a pretty aristocratic woman is the most astonishing thing of all, for a spirited peasant, when he reaches the higher rungs of society." She is "sublime" - she speaks of "black incertitude". She says early on: "What great deed isn't extreme when it's first begun?" and he says on her "with a tigerish look", "I shall have her". This is Julien's "craziness", as he becomes "a self-made social climber" and "a miserable man at war with all society" mostly because of a girl from a wealthy family with such a visible queenly attitude which destroys his personal sense of dignity.

This novel has been billed as one of the greatest of the 19th century. But to truly be a classic, a book should be universal to the extent that it transcends the social milieu in which it was written. Much of Red and Black can only really be appreciated and enjoyed with a detailed knowledge of the political, religious, and cultural background of early 19th century France. This is not the novel's only weakness for the contemporary reader. One of the strong points of the book is the psychological insight it offers. But even here the novel comes up short. Late in the novel our ever introspective and reflective hero, Julian, having read a pivotally damning letter about himself penned by Mme. de Renal, takes off for Verrieres to find her. There he enters a church and shoots down his ex-lover. He undertakes the journey, he hunts down Mme. de Renal, he fires his pistol, all on blind impulse without any introspection or reflection whatsoever. The reader is disturbed by this account, not because it is a carefully rendered human tragedy, but rather because it rings so false to the character of Julian whom we have come to know over the previous 350 pages. Similarly, after Julian's other love interest, the beautiful Mathilde, loses interest in him, he sets out to win her back by making her jealous and appealing to her vanity. Our hero is so successful that he transforms this shallow, superficial, fickle, narcissist into an unwavering rock of devotion. Once more I rolled my eyes and yelled, "Oh, brother!" I appreciate authors who are sensitive to the fact that we humans are all paradoxical and contradictory creatures, but here again Stendhal simply gets it wrong. There is much of value in Red and Black and it is certainly worth reading, but is it one of the greatest novels of the 19th century? Hardly.

The Modern Library "translation" by Burton Raffel of THE RED AND THE BLACK is actually a vulgar, anachronistic retelling of Stendhal's novel. I recall abandoning it in disgust when the main character refers to his life as a total "blast". MTV was obviously very popular in 1830 France.

Instead, the brilliant Moncrieff translation, as revised by Stendhal scholar Ann Jefferson, is highly recommended (Everyman paperback, ISBN 0460876430).

June, 2011 update: Just read the translation Roger Gard did for Penguin just before his untimely death. It is accurate, fluent, free of Briticisms and has excellent and extensive notes. Highly recommended!

Stendhal shows incredible insight in his portrayal of Julien - not a stereotypical hero, he has a fundamentally different perspective on society. I admired and respected him as a 'higher' being, an uncommon soul, above the petty and greedy villagers. But I was sorely disappointed to see him fall due to... what else, love. I thought I had for once found a hero who can resist to emotions of that kind, but I guess not. But that shouldn't stop you from reading this - the language used to describe Julien is amazing.

Published in 1830, The Red and the Black has become known as a book that was written ahead of its time. It's the story of Julien Sorel, an intelligent, ambitious, and deceitful man who comes from humble circumstances, but who dreams of one day becoming a member of the aristocracy. Men gained power in his day through the church, so Julien decides to train to become a priest. While in training, he's hired by the mayor to tutor his children and Julien ends up seducing the mayor's wife and being sent by his mentor to a far-away seminary to quell the controversy.

With time Julien's aspirations start to become a reality as he begins to be included in the circles of high society. But he's unaware that he's being used as a pawn in the political machinations of those around him. Ultimately he ends up trying to obtain his title by marrying the daughter of the Marquis, but his reputation catches up to him and in the end he ends up losing his head, literally.

I never really got into The Red and the Black. As I've done a little research into the book and the context in which it was written and some of the controversy it caused, I gained an appreciation for the book itself and how unique it was for its time. But that didn't make me enjoy it any more. The problem for me was with Julien. I never cared enough about him and what he wanted to accomplish to get emotionally involved in the story. I ended up being just as ambivilent towards the successes he experienced along the way as I was toward his beheading at the end.

For some reason I kept thinking of Dostoyevsky's main character in 'Crime and Punishment' (I can't remember his name)as I read it. Both books were very 'pyschological' in nature. I believe Dostoyevsky the better writer but I felt I could relate to Julien Sorel better, (Main character in 'Red and Black'). Go buy the book. It is one that you cannot put down after you get through the first three pages.

Julien Sorel devotes his life to self-advancement in this classic novel of French Restoration society. Stendhal's thought-by-thought analysis of human motivations invites comparison to Henry James, but the comparison is not very favorable, as James' prose is miles beyond Gard's translation of Stendhal (although admittedly the latter is much easier reading). Overall, this book about a basically bad man who comes to a bad end is not very satisfying, compared to a true masterpiece like Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, for example. Which is not to say it's a bad book, or even a poor one; but it's neither particularly enjoyable nor the great moving revelation that one looks for in a classic. Book One, which focuses on Julien's relationship with Mme de Renal, is much pleasanter reading than Book Two, which is more scattered, and gets bogged down by the disdainful Mathilde. In particular, the political sub-plot seems hopelessly out of place.

In sum, the hopelessly self-centered Julien is not a nice man, Madame de Renal is perhaps not very bright and too easily succumbs to her feelings, while Mathilde's emotional transformations defy credulity. How many of these people will get what they deserve? Ultimately, this reviewer didn't find any of these characters appealing enough to care. Frequently slow-moving and dry, this is a fine example of why so many people don't read the classics. Recommended only to the most resolute devotees of serious literature. For the more casual reader, there are hundreds of classics out there that are both more enjoyable and more significant.

This is a beautifully written book and I enjoyed reading it. At first I was fearful that it would be hard to understand but the real beauty of Stendhal is that he is so clear. It is hard to find that kind of clarity in contemporary writers.