On Love. Stendhal

It is adorned with perfections which they do not see.

      (2) It is adorned with perfections which for them are not perfections at all.

The perfection of certain charms, mentioned to him by an old friend of his love, and a certain hint of liveliness noticed in her eye, are a diamond in the crystallisation[1] of Del Rosso. These ideas, conceived during the evening, keep him dreaming all the night.

An unexpected answer, which makes me see more clearly a tender, generous, ardent, or, as it is popularly called, romantic[2] soul, preferring to the happiness of kings the simple pleasures of a walk with the loved one at midnight in a lonely wood, gives me food for dreams[3] for a whole night.

      Let him call my mistress a prude: I shall call his a whore.

[1] I have called this essay a book of Ideology. My object was to indicate that, though it is called "Love," it is not a novel and still less diverting like a novel. I apologise to philosophers for having taken the word Ideology: I certainly did not intend to usurp a title which is the right of another. If Ideology is a detailed description of ideas and all the parts which can compose ideas, the present book is a detailed description of all the feelings which can compose the passion called Love. Proceeding, I draw certain consequences from this description: for example, the manner of love's cure. I know no word to say in Greek "discourse on ideas." I might have had a word invented by one of my learned friends, but I am already vexed enough at having to adopt the new word crystallisation, and, if this essay finds readers, it is quite possible that they will not allow my new word to pass. To avoid it, I own, would have been the work of literary talent: I tried, but without success. Without this word, which expresses, according to me, the principal phenomenon of that madness called Love—madness, however, which procures for man the greatest pleasures which it is given to the beings of his species to taste on earth—without the use of this word, which it were necessary to replace at every step by a paraphrase of considerable length, the description, which I give of what passes in the head and the heart of a man in love, would have become obscure, heavy and tedious, even for me who am the author: what would it have been for the reader?

      I invite, therefore, the reader, whose feelings the word crystallisation shocks too much, to close the book. To be read by many forms no part of my prayers—happily, no doubt, for me. I should love dearly to give great pleasure to thirty or forty people of Paris, whom I shall never see, but for whom, without knowing, I have a blind affection. Some young Madame Roland, for example, reading her book in secret and precious quickly hiding it, at the least noise, in the drawers of her father's bench—her father the engraver of watches. A soul like that of Madame Roland will forgive me, I hope, not only the word crystallisation, used to express that act of madness which makes us perceive every beauty, every kind of perfection, in the woman whom we begin to love, but also several too daring ellipses besides. The reader has only to take a pencil and write between the lines the five or six words which are missing.

[2] All his actions had at first in my eyes that heavenly air, which makes of a man a being apart, and differentiates him from all others. I thought that I could read in his eyes that thirst for a happiness more sublime, that unavowed melancholy, which yearns for something better than we find here below, and which in all the trials that fortune and revolution can bring upon a romantic soul,

      … still prompts the celestial sight

       For which we wish to live or dare to die.

      (Last letter of Bianca to her mother. Forlì, 1817.)

[3] It is in order to abridge and to be able to paint the interior of the soul, that the author, using the formula of the first person, alleges several feelings to which he is a stranger: personally, he never had any which would be worth quoting.

CHAPTER IV

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      In a soul completely detached—a girl living in a lonely castle in the depth of the country—the slightest astonishment may bring on a slight admiration, and, if the faintest hope intervene, cause the birth of love and crystallisation(4).

      In this case love delights, to begin with, just as a diversion.

      Surprise and hope are strongly supported by the need, felt at the age of sixteen, of love and sadness. It is well known that the restlessness of that age is a thirst for love, and a peculiarity of thirst is not to be extremely fastidious about the kind of draught that fortune offers.

      Let us recapitulate the seven stages of love. They are:—

      1 Admiration.

      2 What pleasure, etc.

      3 Hope.

      4 Love is born.

      5 First crystallisation.

      6 Doubt appears.

      7 Second crystallisation.

      Between Nos. 1 and 2 may pass one year. One month between Nos. 2 and 3; but if hope does not make haste in coming, No. 2 is insensibly resigned as a source of unhappiness.

      A twinkling of the eye between Nos. 3 and 4.

      There is no interval between Nos. 4 and 5. The sequence can only be broken by intimate intercourse.

      Some days may pass between Nos. 5 and 6, according to the degree to which the character is impetuous and used to risk, but between Nos. 6 and 7 there is no interval.

CHAPTER V

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Man is not free to avoid doing that which gives him more pleasure to do than all other possible actions.[1]

      Love is like the fever(5), it is born and spends itself without the slightest intervention of the will. That is one of the principal differences between gallant-love and passion-love. And you cannot give yourself credit for the fair qualities in what you really love, any more than for a happy chance.

      Further, love is of all ages: observe the passion of Madame du Deffant for the graceless Horace Walpole. A more recent and more pleasing example is perhaps still remembered in Paris.

      In proof of great passions I admit only those of their consequences, which are exposed to ridicule: timidity, for example, proves love. I am not speaking of the bashfulness of the enfranchised schoolboy.

[1] As regards crime, it belongs to good education to inspire remorse, which, foreseen, acts as a counterbalance.

CHAPTER VI

       THE CRYSTALS OF SALZBURG

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      Crystallisation scarcely ceases at all during love. This is its history: so long as all is well between the lover and the loved, there is crystallisation by imaginary solution; it is only imagination which make him sure that such and such perfection exists in the woman he loves. But after intimate intercourse, fears are continually coming to life, to be allayed only by more real solutions. Thus his happiness is only uniform in its source. Each