"Vanina Vanini": analysis of the short story, main characters.

What is love and who deserves it? Where does this feeling begin? How to save it? These eternal questions have worried humanity at all times. They did not leave the French writer Stendhal indifferent. His short story “Vanina Vanini” is a love story of young Italians.

We meet the main character of the work at a high society ball, where the most charming women were invited. Princess Vanina Vanini was chosen as queen, who captivated everyone with her beauty. The young princess was not yet in love, so she easily hurts the young man Livio Savelli who passionately fell in love with her. The princess's attention is attracted only by active, decisive men who are capable of action. Vanina Vanini dreams of the love of such a person. Suddenly, news spreads about the escape from the fortress of a young Carbonari, a fighter for the national liberation of Italy. This event excites the imagination of the main character of the story

The nineteen-year-old princess is surrounded by noble and beautiful young men. But Vanina Vanini was tired of their polished appearance. The passionately in love Livio Savelli also seems to the girl to be an uninteresting, boring person, and she rejects his love.

The princess was very demanding not only of others, but also of herself. Having learned that the same fugitive carbonari was hiding in her house, she, forgetting about princely honor, helped him, worried about him, sincerely sympathizing with the young freedom fighter. It is not surprising that this concern grew into passionate love. The girl was afraid of the changes that were taking place in her thoughts. She could not declare her love first, because she was very proud. The only thing Vanina Vanini could afford was to come at night and lean her cheek against the window of the young Carbonari’s room. The princess's pride seems insurmountable. Vanina Vanini convinces herself that she should no longer see Pietro. Stendhal masterfully describes the confusion of the main character's feelings. Carbonari, remembering his simple origin, I didn’t want to confess my love first.

Vanina’s feeling for Vanini turned out to be the strongest, and the girl could not contain it. Over time, the princess's love becomes more demanding and pushes her to betrayal. It seemed to Vanina Vanini that love for Italy was making Pietro forget about her. Having revealed the addresses and surnames of like-minded carbonari, the princess believes that finally her beloved will belong only to her. But the girl unwittingly becomes the culprit of his arrest. Vanina Vanini is forced to resort to cunning, even risking her own life to save her loved one. Unfortunately, her love has no power over Pieter, who has one high goal in life: to die in prison or fight for the freedom of Italy. The princess openly talks about her terrible act, about her betrayal, hoping that her beloved will understand: she did it only for his sake. But instead of Vanina’s gratitude, Vanini hears an evil curse. This unexpected answer changes the life of the main character: she soon marries the aristocrat Livio Savelli.

In his novella, Stendhal rejects such selfish love, which leads only to destruction, and extols pure love, capable of protecting a loved one from danger, giving him happiness and peace.

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Over the course of nine years (1830-1839), Stendhal created his most perfect works - the novels "Red and Black", "Lucien Levene" ("Red and White"), "The Monastery of Parma". The creative flowering was prepared by the whole life of Henri Beyle. He obtained building material, studying the era, getting to know his contemporaries better and better. He learned to build in a new way, developing an innovative creative method and individual style. He began to create novels - beautiful in a new way - when he had already learned to lay under them that solid foundation that had long ago begun to take shape in his other works and articles - knowledge of political reality.

Stendhal, criticizing the existing social system in his journalistic works, always answered the question: what did he give to young people belonging to all classes, to all strata of society?

And he created his works for democratic readers - for young men who huddle on the sixth floors *.

* (In France, the bottom floor of a house is called rez-de-chaussee (at ground level), the second floor is the first, etc. During the time of Stendhal, the big bourgeoisie lived on the first floors, on the second - people of average income - doctors, lawyers, on the fifth and sixth - poor students, minor employees.)

Youth is “the hope of the fatherland,” wrote Stendhal (Corr., II, 245). She is the future of the nation. What kind of heritage did the young men born during the reign of Napoleon or after the Bourbon restoration receive? (S.A., III, 440, etc.). What paths to happiness can they choose? What do they see as their duty? Why are they dramatic? life path? What does their experience teach the next generations? After Armance, Henri Beyle again and again turns to these motifs in short stories, unfinished works, and in his masterpieces.

Stendhal, starting with Armance, and Balzac, starting with Shagreen Skin, repeatedly answered the question: what kind of practical activity can one engage in in a capitalist society without being a bourgeois “prudent” money-grubber? What can a young man become without adapting to conditions that severely disfigure him intellectually and morally? This theme is one of the main ones in French realistic art. XIX literature-XX centuries, for the first time boldly and angrily, deeply humanely and mercilessly soberly sounded in “Red and Black”.

At the very time when the aristocrat Octave neglected his high position in society, in 1827, a poor and unknown young man of low origin - Julien Sorel ("Red and Black") decided to rise at all costs and therefore was forced to adapt to the prevailing classes by accepting their rules of the game.

To readers who accused Julien of cynicism, hypocrisy, and dishonesty, Stendhal replied: the existing conditions are such that an energetic character has one opportunity to express himself - in “a certain trickery.” “I assure you, no one made a big fortune without being Julien.” *

* (Les plus belles lettres de Stendhal, pp. 79, 75.)

Another young man, Lucien Levene (the hero of the novel of the same name) will be convinced that practical activity in the public service during the years of the July Monarchy requires the ability and desire to be unscrupulous, heartless, and dishonest.

The third young man, Italian Fabrizio Del Dongo (“Parma Monastery”), will refuse practical activities and will kill the sunny cheerfulness in himself along with his enormous energy.

“Personal initiative” in the works of Stendhal is synonymous with what he called trickery. The author of "The Red and the Black" must have always admired "Tom Jones" partly for the reason that Fielding in this novel interpreted the poetics of the picaresque novel in exactly this way. In Stendhal, Balzac, Daumier, socially specific, typical of the era images of rogues become extremely capacious in content...

After the revolution awakened the energy of the people, young people were able to show their talents in political activity, or defending the independence of the homeland on the battlefields, or in the field of industry and technology, or in literature, ideology (like Bayle and Joseph Rey).

Napoleon skillfully used this energy in his own way: the conquering army absorbed youth, and military glory was poeticized as its only possible ideal.

Under the Bourbons, a military career became the privilege of the nobles. And the awakened energy in the 20s, when bourgeois social relations were already developing, was bubbling. Industry and trade need it more than ever before: the mass of the exploited is growing simultaneously with the wealth of enterprising people. But talented youth dream of a different destiny. “The desire to create in all areas is as imperative as the thirst for freedom,” and the “unsatisfied need for activity” finds a way out in a passion for science, literature, and the teachings of utopian socialists, says the French literary critic R. Picard * about the young generation of that era. The sons of doctors, lawyers, Napoleonic officers, talented people from the “bottom” of society flock to Paris, hoping to win success. One of them, the son of a general of the Republic, arriving in the capital with fifty-three francs in his pocket and overcoming all obstacles, made his name - Alexandre Dumas - famous. But not everyone is given the opportunity to become writers or scientists (like V. Jacquemont). The lucky ones graduate from the Polytechnic School. And the path of many young men, strewn with the fragments of hopes and illusions, is bleak. They - and above all those who are republican-minded - join the ranks of poverty-stricken intellectuals.

* (R. Picard, Le romanticisme social, p. 61.)

Such people are opposed by the nobility, the “ignorant and lazy” (Stendhal), the insidious Jesuits, the insatiable bourgeois predators. The reaction in both the 20s and 30s defended itself against talented and energetic youth, preventing their activity, which was unsafe for the existing system. “Our society strives to destroy everything that rises above limitations,” Stendhal wrote in 1831 (Corr., III, 25).

But it is increasingly difficult to suppress the demands of talented young men from the people and the petty-bourgeois environment; it is impossible to suppress in them their self-esteem and the consciousness that their demands are fair. An intolerable situation younger generation and the ruling class’s fear of it are typical features of both the pre-revolutionary situation at the end of the 20s and the era that came after the July Revolution. In the finale of “The Red and the Black,” Julien Sorel accurately spoke about these features of the political situation, which gave rise to the drama of the conflict between the individual and society and made the lot of Julien himself so sad.

The struggle of a young rebel against a society hostile to him is a favorite theme of French romantics during the Restoration era. At the same time, not only in such novels as “Jean Sbogar” by C. Nodier, but also in “Eriani” by V. Hugo, the conventionality of the scenery corresponded to a similar depiction of exotic images, torn from the circumstances characteristic of modern times.

Stendhal's heroes live in a specific political situation; in a collision with her, their characters develop. They are inseparable from the era, its signs are imprinted in their spiritual appearance, in the individual originality of their feelings and actions. Each of them is a unique personality and a generalized character, typical of their time. The reader has no doubt that they are real people, everything is authentic both in their extraordinary life paths and in the picture of society.

Stendhal, as a historical writer, received a detailed report on the case of Antoine Berthe, published at the end of December 1827 in the Gazette des Tribunaux (Court Newspaper) *. Seminarian Berthe, the son of a peasant blacksmith, tutor in the bourgeois family of Mishu, received the favor of the mistress of the house; then he was fired. Having become a tutor in the family of an aristocratic landowner, Berthe started an affair with his daughter - and was fired again. Deciding that this was the fault of Madame Mishu, the proud and vindictive young man shot her in the church. He was put on trial in Grenoble and executed in 1828 on the very Place de la Grenet, onto which the house of Henri Bayle’s grandfather overlooked.

This report is one of the sources of the plan for the novel about Julien Sorel, the original version of which (“Julien”), probably written at the end of 1829, has not survived.

The second source of the idea for The Red and the Black is the court report of the Laffargue case, used and commented on by Stendhal in Walks in Rome. Laffargue, a cabinetmaker, came from a petty-bourgeois environment, loved his craft very much, was fond of philosophy and literature, was modest, but proud and proud. One frivolous girl took it into her head to make him her lover. Then she roughly broke up with Laffargue, and her mother asked the prosecutor to protect her daughter from his persecution. Offended by this betrayal and a call to the police, tormented by jealousy, the young worker decided: he would punish the villain, justice demands this. After killing the girl, he unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide.

The French literary critic Claude Liprandi cited in his very detailed monograph on the sources of "The Red and the Black" a lot of evidence that the image of Jules Sorel is undoubtedly closer to the personality, character of the romantic, nervous and noble (as depicted by newspaper reporters) Laffargue than to the rather petty Berthe *.

* (Claude Liprandi, Au coeur du "Rouge". L'affaire Laffargue et "Le Rouge et le Noir".)

But Laffargue, like Berthe, cannot be identified with Julien Sorel. Stendhal started from both the Berthe case and the Laffargue case, which suggested to him the idea and plot of the novel; they were, so to speak, fuel for his thoughts and imagination, activating them.

It does not follow from this that one can underestimate the help of factual material, which helped Henri Beyle to set in motion his life experience, to creatively realize his knowledge of the era and the human heart.

The drama of the Laffargue case and the atmosphere of passion in it greatly interested Stendhal and was remembered by him. “If people kill now, it is because of love, like Othello,” we read in the chapter of “Walks in Rome” dedicated to Laffargue *. And now I have discovered among the people Shakespearean passions author of "History of Painting in Italy". And it was not for nothing that he named Othello: the Moor became a general, necessary and useful to the Venetian nobility, but opposed to it as a stranger who came from another world - and the same would have been the lot of Julien Sorel, even if nothing had prevented his brilliant career.

* (And not for the sake of money, which, as Stendhal repeatedly reminded, was more typical of the bourgeois 19th century.)

The rapprochement of the people, passion and Shakespeare, like a tuning fork, predetermined both the dramatic tension and the anti-bourgeois nature of the novel. For Henri Beyle, just as during the writing of the pamphlets "Racine and Shakespeare", the name of the English playwright is synonymous with naturalness, national, folk art, synonymous with the denial of conventions born of the existence of the upper classes.

But the creative imagination could not rely on the analogy with Othello: on its basis only the most general scheme would arise, which would lack specificity.

It was introduced by Stendhal's reflections on Laffargue as a social type of the post-revolutionary! era.

They led the writer to another analogy - not literary, but historical.

Young people like Laffargue, says the author of Walks in Rome, if they manage to get good upbringing, are forced to work and struggle with real need, which is why they retain the capacity for strong feelings and terrifying energy. At the same time, their pride is easily vulnerable. And since ambition is often born from a combination of energy and pride, Stendhal ended his characterization of the young plebeian with the following remark: “Probably all great men will henceforth come from the class to which M. Laffargue belongs. Napoleon once combined the same characteristics: good upbringing, ardent imagination and extreme poverty."

In Stendhal's Memoirs of Napoleon, artillery lieutenant Bonaparte is depicted as a poor, proud and extraordinarily multi-talented young man with a fiery heart and inexhaustible energy. Defending the republican system, he was able to demonstrate the talent of a commander and the mind of a statesman. A fervent imagination carried him along the path of ambition. He crushed the revolution to seize power in the country. The great man became the "genius of despotism."

Napoleon, so to speak, is the classic type of an unknown but outstanding young man, a lonely ambitious man, capable of overcoming any obstacles in order to win success in a proprietary society - honor, fame, wealth, power. That is why the writer, talking about Laffargue, remembered Napoleon. What will be the fate of the ardent, energetic and ambitious poor man during the Restoration era? Will such a young man, coming from the environment to which Laffargue belongs, succeed in becoming a “great man”? What obstacles will he have to overcome to achieve this in modern conditions? What should his character be like for him to achieve complete success?

Considering the life paths of Berthe and Laffargue in the light of his reflections on the history of France, Stendhal discovered in the facts of the criminal chronicle the source of a grandiose artistic and philosophical generalization about the nature of modern society.

At the same time, when the writer embodied this generalization in images, in the drama of the political novel “Red and Black,” he spoke about the path of another poor, proud and ardent young man of the 19th century.

2

To truly understand the complex character of Julien Sorel, one must see how he is internally connected with the image of Pietro Missirili, the hero of the short story "Vanina Vanini", and at the same time - opposed to him. In the short story "Vanina Vanini" and in the novel "Red and Black" we find two options for developing the same problem.

This short story is a work of “true romanticism,” which Stendhal, the “hussar of freedom,” did not identify with French romanticism.

It depicts the real, real-life romance of a sublime passion for freedom. This passion fights in the hero’s heart - with love; the heroine's heart is in the grip of love, pride and jealousy; powerful, frantic feelings force the hero and heroine to disregard danger without hesitation.

The romance of passionate feelings is depicted by Stendhal realistically, with amazing naturalness. The hero of the story, carbonari Pietro Missirili - Stendhal's romantic character. But he is embodied by Stendhal the realist.

Missirili is inseparable from its time. The individual situation in which he acts is generated by the historical, political situation, under the conditions of which his character was formed. The individual conflict in the novella is due to the intensity of the political struggle.

The subtitle of the novella speaks about the political situation: “Special circumstances of the exposure of the last Venta Carbonari in the Papal States.”

The subtitle, in the style of either a historical article or a newspaper chronicle of events, seems to emphasize the undeniable reality of the novel’s extraordinary content. And, like a tuning fork, the subtitle gives Stendhal's prose its general tone - businesslike and dry, outwardly dispassionate.

B. G. Reizov showed that, although in the subtitle and in the style of "Vanina Vanini" there is an orientation toward documentary, the content of the short story is far from the "anecdote" on which Stendhal's fantasy relied, completely transforming it. "Therefore, it would be more correct to say not as much about the “sources” of “Vanina Vanini” as about the materials that inspired Stendhal and helped him in his creative work of thought and imagination." * A conclusion that characterizes the style of Bayle’s work not only on this short story; it is also true in relation to Stendhal’s masterpieces - “Red and Black”, “Lucien Levene”, “Parma Monastery”.

* (B. G. Reizov, On the question of the sources of Stendhal’s short story “Vanina Vanini.” - Scientific Notes of Leningrad University, No. 299, series philological sciences, vol. 59, Romance Philology L. 1961, p. 171.)

"Vanina Vanini" is a drama of a new, Stendhal type in the form of a chronicle novella. The action in it develops even more rapidly than in Merimee’s short stories written before her. And even among most of Stendhal’s works, the prose of “Vanina Vanini” stands out for its laconicism and energy. This impression is strengthened by its capacity: the author is laconic, but did not miss a single circumstance, did not sacrifice a single significant transition or nuance in the experiences and thoughts of the characters for the sake of conciseness. The reader is confident both in the authenticity of the drama and in the fact that he has learned everything about it; more details would ease her tension.

Maxim Gorky told in a note about Balzac how highly L. Tolstoy appreciated the ability of Stendhal, Flaubert, Maupassant to “concentrate the content” *. This art of Stendhal was fully manifested in the short story “Vanina Vanini”.

* (M. Gorky, Collection. op. in thirty volumes, vol. 24, p. 140.)

The exhibition, which occupies only two pages, characterizes: the political situation, the environment to which Vanina belongs, the event that became the prerequisite for the beginning of the drama (Missirili’s romantic escape from the prison castle). The exhibition also provides a psychological motivation for the pattern of the plot, the further development of the drama and the conflict: Vanina is the character of a romantic noble girl, typical of Stendhal’s works, who despises graceful but empty young aristocrats and is able to recognize an intelligent, energetic, brave man from the people as worthy of her respect and love.

The climax in the development of the action (Stendhal emphasized its meaning in italics) takes only sixteen lines. In them, with extraordinary laconicism, both the conflict in which Vanina and Missirili tragically collided, and the main features of these images are concentrated.

The young carbonari Missirili, a poor man, the son of a surgeon, and Vanina, distinguished by her intelligence, independence of judgment, amazing beauty and high position in society, fell in love with each other. What is new about these characters?

Maxim Gorky called the “true and only heroine of Stendhal’s book” the will to live *. The enormous vital energy and determination of the heroes of Henri Beyle’s works are always expressed in the will to live - not the kind that circumstances impose on them, but another, beautiful one in their imagination.

* ()

In Missirili, everything is subordinated to his unbending will: he will help liberate and unite Italy. This is the only way he wants to live - to fight and win. Sacrifice is alien to him. He suffers along with his humiliated people, and for him, duty to his homeland is duty to himself. He, a proud patriot and revolutionary, will never submit! In Vanina, proud of the knowledge that her personality is significant, everything is subordinated to the will to win happiness, which secular society cannot give her.

Vanina finds this happiness in her love for Missirili. She preferred the young Carbonari to everyone and will be the only mistress of his heart, displacing her rival Italy from him.

But this is impossible. Missirili "reckless". He, the “madman,” prefers the lot of a persecuted rebel to personal happiness: nothing will force him to betray his sacred duty. Missirili, like Vanina, is a holistic character.

Conflict is inevitable.

Remembering the promise that Missirili made to her (the uprising organized by him will last attempt liberate the homeland), Vanina sends the list of members of the Venta to the papal legate; She prudently crosses out the name of her lover. Missirili learns that his comrades have been arrested. His despair and anger are boundless. Who is the traitor? He's free and people will suspect him! Therefore, he must immediately surrender himself into the hands of the legate. Saying goodbye to Vanina, Missirili demands: “Destroy, destroy the traitor, even if it is my father.”

“Yes, I will punish the vile traitor, but first we need to return Pietro’s freedom,” exclaims Vanina, overcome by cruel grief.

This is the Corneillean culmination of Stendhal's romantic drama.

But only the character of Missirili is at the level of high tragedy. With heroic honesty and directness, he pronounces a harsh verdict on himself: he betrayed his duty by giving his heart, which belonged to his homeland, to a woman; that's why the uprising failed. “The demands of duty are cruel, my friend,” he says simply, sincerely, without the slightest pretense, “but if they could be fulfilled easily, what would heroism consist of?”

Let's imagine that Vanina kept her word, given in a fit of repentance and grief, and punished the traitor - herself. Then she too would be on a par with Missirili. How shocking would be the tragedy of her fate! This would have happened if Vanina had been as devoted to the interests of her homeland as Missirili, and if she could not forgive herself for the pride that blinded her. But she is in despair only because, through her fault, Missirili is depriving herself of freedom. Her reckless - she herself thinks so - passion for the young carbonari is incomparable with the love-devotion that Stendhal portrayed in other works as a passionate and spiritual fusion of two beings. Vanina gets carried away and acts recklessly and boldly, but not in the same way as her lover. She remains a person from another world, alien and hostile to Missirili. Love for him is just an extraordinary, romantic and tragic episode in the monotonous, hothouse existence of a noble girl, like an eternal festival.

Stendhal admitted in “Memoirs of an Egotist”: he cannot imagine “a real person not endowed with at least a small degree of courageous energy * and steadfastness, depth of convictions...”. In the short story “Vanina Vanini,” the writer created a generalized poetic character of such a real person - a participant in a secret revolutionary society, courageous, unbendingly persistent, confident that he had chosen the right path. It is very important that Missirili is not a “superman”, not a mysterious, rare hero. Humble, he considers himself one of many. He is not elevated above his comrades. His heroic lifestyle is motivated and depicted as "fearless consistency honest man, a true patriot. And the honest accuracy of the novel’s alien rhetoric, chronicle style, iron logic and naturalness in the development of its dramatic action seem inseparable from the appearance of the novel’s hero. The harmonious correspondence of the style and construction of the plot to the characters, the end-to-end action of the main characters will continue to remain a distinctive feature of Stendhal’s realistic mastery.

* (Stendhal's italics.)

The progressive young man of the 19th century, Missirili, was not mistaken in choosing a goal to which it was worth dedicating his life.

And in France during the years of the Restoration there were Carbonari - “noble madmen” who chose the same goal as the Missirili.

Their contemporary, another young man of the 19th century, Julien Sorel, took a different path and made a tragic mistake.

3

In "The Life of Henri Brulard" Stendhal remembered: he was happy in 1830, working on "Red and Black". The publisher received edited chapters one after another, supplemented with new episodes and details. The pages written on the eve of the July Revolution were typed and printed in August: printing workers, reports A. Martino, fought in the streets during the days of the uprising.”

In The Red and the Black, Stendhal depicted France "as it is in 1830." Stendhal then replaced the subtitle of the novel “Chronicle of 1830” with another - “Chronicle of the 19th Century”, which was more consistent with both the author’s words (in an address to readers) that the book was written in 1827, and the chronology of “Red and Black” (its action begins in the fall of 1826 and ends in July 1831, and in the finale, as A. Martino found out, having traced the chronological outline of the novel, there are inconsistencies in the dating of events).

"The truth. The bitter truth." These words are the epigraph to the first part of "Red and Black". Stendhal attributed them to Danton: after all, truth is a revolutionary force.

The novel is a mirror that is carried along the high road, we read in “Red and Black”; it reflects both the puddles and the azure of the sky, both the low and the sublime. The word "mirror" sounds here as a synonym for realism (but not naturalism). Stendhal's work was never a mirror copy of reality or its imitation.

Stendhal did not like to describe the setting or costumes. And it was not the external plausibility of the descriptions that he considered the achievement of literature that accurately depicts life. But when creating a novel, he always relied on facts, on reality. How did he do it?

Claude Liprandi, in his first monograph on "Red and Black" * rightly argued that the subtitle of this novel - "Chronicle of the 19th Century" - has a programmatic character. Expressing confidence that Stendhal’s work contains many still unsolved hints about the events of the era, that real facts are hidden behind the “smallest details,” K. Liprandi cited some of them, deciphered by him. His conclusions: in ("Red and Black" history is depicted both "as it could have been" ("what could have happened") and "as it was." ** This is true. But K. Liprandi is wrong and contradicts himself when he says that “Red and Black” is “not a political novel” *** and that Stendhal depicted the typical features of modernity, remaining neutral, that is, objectivistically using facts without transforming them.

* (Claude Liprandi, Stendhal, le "bord de l"eau" et la "note secrete", Avignon, 1949.)

** (Claude Liprandi, Stendhal, le "bord de l"eau" et la "note secrete", Avignon, 1949. p. 136.)

*** (Claude Liprandi, Stendhal, le "bord de l"eau" et la "note secrete", p. 188.)

The concreteness and accuracy of the embodiment of reality in “Red and Black” and other works of Stendhal has nothing to do with objectivism. Critically studying the life of society, creating a realistic generalized picture of it, the writer melted down real facts in his creative laboratory, highlighted the most important things in them, elevated them, typifying them, and subordinated all the details to his plan.

“Dominique is a stickler for details...” – Stendhal wrote (M.I.M., II, 97,). “Little true facts” (as he called them) are the bricks of authenticity from which a realist writer builds and depicts the movement of life. They are connected with the ideological concept and help the development of action. After long training, Bayle learned to immediately, “without preparing in advance” (M. L., I, 157), find the necessary characteristic details.

And big genuine facts (everything related to what has already become historical theme Napoleon, or court reports in the Gazette des Tribunaux), and Stendhal needed “facts” as support for his creative imagination. He even emphasized, it happened, in the margins of the manuscript that such and such a detail was not invented by him (for example, in the margins of the “Parma Monastery” he made a note: he saw the mosaic Florentine table, which he had just written about, then and there ). Such “true facts” made it easier for Stendhal to transform himself and help him achieve a natural image.

Experience also convinced Stendhal that it is useful for a writer, when incubating images, sculpting characters, to imagine real people whom he knows well *. French researchers have found that the characters in "The Red and the Black" had real prototypes**. The same can be said with confidence about other episodes. It was found out that even the palace of the Marquis de la Mole was copied from the luxurious house of Talleyrand.

* (“When describing a man, a woman, a place, think about real people, real things,” he advised the aspiring writer Madame Gautier in 1834 (Corr., III, 115).)

** (Stendhal himself named the prototypes of some of the heroes “Armans”.)

But the characters in the novel are not moving portraits. The artistically and historically concrete character of Julien Sorel is incomparably larger, deeper, more complex, more meaningful, more typical and therefore more real for us than the everyday concrete people of the 20s of the 19th century - Berthe and Laffargue, as they appear in court reports and other materials. The palace of the Marquis de la Mole is not a photograph of Talleyrand's house. And Verrieres is a generalized image of a provincial town. Constantly taking life material from the abundant reserves of memory and never fettering imagination, Stendhal created typical characters - new both in social content and in their artistic originality. At the same time, they have individual and social characteristics. The provincial bourgeois nobleman de Renal, the Parisian aristocrat de la Mole, the simple man Fouquet look like people from different worlds, although they are all French from the Restoration era.

To outline the basic - historical, pre-revolutionary - situation of "Red and Black", Stendhal depicted in the chapters devoted to the secret note an ultra-royalist conspiracy: foreseeing the inevitability of revolution, they decide to create detachments of the White Guard and call on foreign interventionists to curb the Parisians and the entire French people. But, as we know, the private conflict central to the novel between the poor man Julien and a social system hostile to the poor was also generated by the typical political situation of the era.

The author of the novel does not hide: he is not dispassionate. But, loving and hating, he always soberly examines the true motives of his contemporaries. It is precisely thanks to this precious feature of Stendhal's realism - the justice of his "poetic justice" - that the images of the novel are so vital and plastic and the criticism of the social system contained in it is so undeniable.

The hero of the Resistance, the poet Jacques Decourt, argued in an article about “The Red and the Black,” published after his death: Stendhal depicted the development of Julien’s character with the iron logic of a mathematician, as if solving one problem after another. And the entire novel, from the first page, defeats the reader with the iron logic with which every detail prepares and shows the objective conditionality of the development of dramatic action.

In 1826, Henri Bayle noted: a novel should be written in such a way that, reading one page, “you could never guess the content of the next” (S. A., III, 155). In 1838, Stendhal advised one writer: the “adventures” (action) should begin from the sixth to eighth pages of the novel. In “The Red and the Black,” every page conceals something unexpected by the reader, and from the very first page all the details introduce the environment and the characters in such a way that they prepare the action.

Having started reading the novel, we learn: the gardens of the rich man Mr. de Renal, “where there is completely wall on wall,” have displaced the sawmill of Sorel, Julien’s father. The landscape is not just described. He actively participates in the relationships between the characters and in the exposition. We see how the vanity of the arrogant mayor of Verrieres (one of those bourgeois who feel patriotic when they look with pride at their furniture; M.I.M., II, 92) and the greed of the old peasant - the main traits of their characters - manifest themselves in the negotiations during the purchase by de Renal land plot of Sorel.

In the epigraph to the first chapter there is an image of a cell; The writer more than once mentions in this chapter the walls enclosing private property, the tyranny of “public opinion” of the provincial bourgeoisie. The motif of walls, fences, cages is the key to the theme of the existence of owners and the poor in a provincial town, to the theme of the immobility of this life, general disunity, distrust, and constraint. In this cage Mr. de Renal thrives, an ultra-nobleman, ashamed of having become an industrialist, a self-satisfied owner, with an excellent house and a well-educated wife. In this cage, Julien Sorel is suffocating.

4

In the margins of Armance, Stendhal wrote: “a novel is created by action” (M. I. M., II, 76). Julien thought a lot about life, but did not know it. Every hour - in the house of Mr. de Renal, in the seminary, in Paris - he is faced with circumstances that he did not foresee, which force him to act. Julien's knowledge of life is effective. The development of his character is associated with sharp turns in action.

The author of “The Red and the Black,” after the publication of this work, more than once expressed regret that hatred of Chateaubriand’s sluggish, pretentious “eloquence” prompted him to make some chapters of the novel “dry” and to prefer a “sharp” style, “too compressed,” “abrupt ", "chopped" phrases (M.I.M., II, 137, 140, 141, "The Life of Henri Brulard"), which, he feared, made it difficult to perceive his work. Is this self-criticism fair? Every phrase of the novel about the wasted energy of a talented poor man is saturated with energy that is generated by the content of the book. This laconic style is entirely suited to depicting action. The importance of statistics for characterizing style should not be exaggerated; yet it is no coincidence that in “Red and Black” nouns do not greatly predominate over verbs *.

* (In Balzac's "Père Goriot" there are twice as many nouns as verbs. As the famous French linguist Marcel Cohen found out, in romantic prose a phrase without a verb is quite common. The conclusions of the Soviet researcher N.N. Teterevnikova from her observations on the style of “Red and Black” are interesting; it becomes “chopped” and especially laconic “in the most dramatic moments actions that seem to move forward the main events of the novel, or at moments of highest emotional tension"; the rhythm of prose in this novel "seems to be subordinate to the rhythm of the action itself, sometimes the very thought of the character" (that is, internal action - Ya. F.); features Stendhal's style are justified by the situation, internally connected with the content (N. N. Teterevnikova, On Stendhal's style (the stylistic role of some forms of construction and combination of sentences). - Scientific Notes of the Leningrad University, No. 299, series of philological sciences, issue 59, Romance philology, L. 1961, pp. 224-237).)

The dialogue in "Red and Black" is intensely effective. And Stendhal widely, masterfully used an innovative discovery - an internal monologue full of drama to depict all the nuances in the thoughts and experiences of Julien, Madame de Renal and Mathilde de la Mole - internal action, the continuation of which are actions inseparable from it.

The psychology of the novel's heroes is complex and contradictory. Their relationship is inseparable from mental struggle. It is in the work of Julien’s thoughts and spiritual movements that both his effective striving for the goal and the internal struggle that he experiences are embodied in sculptural relief. Probably, Stendhal thought about this most important feature of his mastery great artist“dialectics of the soul” Leo Tolstoy, when he, rereading “Red and Black”, noticed that, just as in the early forties, and now in 1883, he did not like everything in this novel, but what aroused his sympathy was “courage, relatedness "Stendhal to him, Tolstoy *.

* (L. N. Tolstoy, Complete. collection cit., series 3, Letters, vol. 83. Goslitizdat, M. 1938, p. 410.)

The deeply intellectual image of Julien, a hero characterized by intense work of thought, captures the final victory of the new way of portraying people, following Armance. “This celebration of the mind, made possible thanks to the new technology, was a decisive break with the romantic tradition and fashion,” Jean Prevost rightly noted in his work “Creation in Stendhal.” Julien, with the penetrating gaze of an enemy, sees the world in which he lives, explores both it and his experiences, penetrates his thoughts into the past, tries to discern his future. The reader, together with the hero of the novel, comprehends the events, and everything is clear to him. “So, the novel is no longer a mysterious story, to which the denouement brings clarity?” - wrote Jean Prevost, developing his idea, contrasting “Red and Black” romantic tradition*. The hero, looking critically at his life, first appeared in the work of the author of the pamphlets "Racine and Shakespeare", whose motto is "Exploring." Stendhal carried out his innovative program. He elevated, said M. Gorky, “a very ordinary criminal offense to the level of a historical and philosophical study of the social system of the bourgeoisie at the beginning of the 19th century.” ** Stendhal himself also called “Red and Black” a “philosophical narrative.”

* (Jean Prevost, Creation chez Stendhal, Paris, 1951, p. 253.)

** (M. Gorky, Collection. op. in thirty volumes, vol. 26, p. 219.)

In the novel, as J. Prevost rightly noted, two points of view collide: the reader sees everything that happens in “Red and Black” both through the eyes of Julien and through the eyes of the author, whose horizons are incomparably wider, who knows what is unclear to his hero, and from the heights of his worldview he closely examines the political situation, society and Julien’s path in it. The technique of “double vision” is a visual means subject to vigilant criticism and creating the impression of complete objectivity; it also participates in creating depth corresponding to perspective in painting.

The intense work of thought and the acuteness of Julien Sorel's experiences are motivated by the fact that the world of property owners and nobility appears to the hero of the novel as an area of the unknown, full of dangers, like a country unfamiliar to Julien with dizzying steeps and deep abysses. Portrayal of Julien Sorel's life as extraordinary adventures in the sphere of thoughts and experiences is justified not only psychologically, but also socially - by the plebeian origin of the hero.

5

So, in France, where reaction dominates, there is no scope for talented people from the people. They suffocate and die, as if in prison. Those who are deprived of privilege and wealth must, for self-defense and, especially, to achieve success, adapt.

Julien Sorel's behavior is determined by the political situation. It links into a single and inextricable whole the picture of morals, the drama of experiences, and the fate of the hero of the novel.

Julien Sorel is a young man of the people. K. Liprandi wrote down from the novel words that characterize Julien in social terms: “son of a peasant,” “young peasant,” “son of a worker,” “young worker,” “son of a carpenter,” “poor carpenter.” In fact, the son of a peasant who owns a sawmill must work at it, just like his father and brothers. By his social status, Julien is a worker (but not hired); he is a stranger in the world of the rich, well-mannered, educated. But even in his family, this talented plebeian with a “strikingly unique face” is like an ugly duckling: his father and brothers hate the “frail”, useless, dreamy, impetuous, incomprehensible young man. At nineteen he looks like a frightened boy. And enormous energy lurks and bubbles within him - the power of a clear mind, proud character, unbending will, “fierce sensitivity.” His soul and imagination are fiery, in his eyes there is flame.

This is not a portrait of a Byronic hero like the Corsair, Manfred. Byronism had long been adopted by high-society snobs and became a pose that would soon be useful to Julien Sorel in the Parisian palaces. Romantically extreme, as if excessive development of all traits, qualities, abilities in the portrait of Julien (harmonizing with the most dramatic turns of action and incredible situations) - everyday and political origin. Stendhal needed the reader to feel and see what enormous and precious human energy, awakened in the “lower” classes by the era of the French revolutions, overwhelms this gifted young man from the people and, finding no way out, feeds the “sacred fire” of ambition that is increasingly flaring up in him . Stendhal's novel was written about the tragic uselessness of this popular energy in a reactionary era. Julien stands at the foot of the social ladder. He feels that he is capable of great deeds that would elevate him. But circumstances are hostile to him.

American literary critic Michael Guggenheim accused Aragon, Jean Warloo and some other French communist writers in his article “Communists and Stendhal” of distorting the image of Henri Beyle, painting him as a democrat and advanced person era. Only in their works does this “dreamer extend his hand to the proletarian,” M. Guggenheim sneers. The American literary critic replaced all the complexity of Stendhal's attitude towards the masses with “disgust for the vulgar” (which M. Guggenheim, apparently, completely identifies with the popular).

M. Guggenheim's subjective approach to literature collided with the scientific objectivity of the party approach - and this is what happened. How could Aragon - exclaims the author of the article - call the son of the poor carpenter Julien Sorel, who has the finest sensitivity! “Aragon hastened to forget about everything that brings the hero of “The Red and the Black” closer to the young Henri Bayle (the son of a wealthy bourgeois). If it was essential in Julien that he was the son of a poor carpenter, he would not have been so close to Fabrizio or Lucien Leuven, which belong to the best families" *.

* (Michael Guggenheim, Les communistes et Stendhal.- "Symposium", vol. XI, No. 2, Fall 1957, Syracuse, New York, pp. 258-259.)

The author of “The Red and the Black” more than once called Julien “the son of a carpenter,” “the son of a worker,” “a poor carpenter.” Apparently, he considered it very significant that the “rootless” young man, a man of the people, was smarter, more sensitive, nobler, and more talented than the scions of the aristocracy whom he encounters in the novel. As for the “best families”, we will have to look ahead to recall that Lucien Levene’s father (in the novel of the same name), a wealthy banker, is depicted as a smart and charming “rogue”, and old man Del Dongo in “The Monastery of Parma” is depicted as disgusting a vulgar and low person (and the reader is informed that Fabrizio’s father is not he, but a French officer).

So, M. Guggenheim entered into a polemic not with Aragon and other French communist writers, but with Henri Bayle, the son of a wealthy bourgeois. The author of the article was let down by his primitive biographicalism, the vulgar sociological way of analyzing literature.

Julien knows for sure: he lives in the camp of enemies. Therefore, he is embittered, secretive and always wary. Nobody knows how much he hates arrogant rich people: he has to pretend. Nobody knows what he enthusiastically dreams about while rereading his favorite books - Rousseau and Las Casas's "Memorial of the Island of St. Helena." His hero, deity, teacher is Napoleon, a lieutenant who became an emperor. If Julien had been born earlier, he, Napoleon's soldier, would have won glory on the battlefields. His element is heroic deeds. He appeared on earth late - no one needs exploits. And yet, like a lion cub among wolves, alone, he believes in his own strength - and in nothing else. Julien is one against all. And in his imagination he is already defeating his enemies - like Napoleon!

In 1838, Stendhal noted that Julien's unbridled imagination was one of the most important features of his character: "Ten years earlier, the author, wanting to paint a sensitive and honest young man, made him, by creating Julien Sorel, not only ambitious, but also with a head overflowing with imagination and illusion" (M. L., I, 235-236).

In this combination (heightened sensitivity and honesty, the power of imagination, ambition and faith in illusion) is all the unique and individual originality of Julien’s character, the crystallization of his feelings, his through action.

Julien's ardent imagination elevates him above the environment, above the limited owners and officials who can only dream of a new acquisition, a new reward. Julien opposes the “prudent” de Renal, Valenos and the like as a poetic character, as a “madman” who despises the base prose of their existence. Characterizing Julien in his unpublished article written for the Italian magazine "Antologia" (Anthology), Stendhal highly praised the portrayal of Julien Sorel's "follies": they are amazing, but depicted with the naturalness in which the author of the novel sees the ideal of beauty in style (M. L. , II, 351).

But the hero of "The Red and the Black" is not such a "madman" as Pietro Missirili. And the young Carbonari of his dreams is elevated above the environment. And he confronts the “prudent” aristocrats and oppressors of Italy as an extraordinary, poetic character. But the “madness” of Pietro Missirili was generated by his integrity, the honest consistency of a fighter for the freedom of his homeland.

In Julien Sorel, imagination is subordinated to frantic ambition.

Ambition in itself is not a negative quality. French word"ambition" means both "ambition" and "thirst for glory", "thirst for honor" and "aspiration", "aspiration"; Ambition, as La Rochefoucauld said, does not happen with spiritual lethargy; in it there is “liveliness and ardor of the soul.” Ambition forces a person to develop his abilities and overcome difficulties.

Whatever Julien undertakes, the liveliness and ardor of his soul perform miracles. Its psychophysiological organization is a device remarkable in sensitivity, speed and impeccability of action; Stendhal the physiologist took care of this. Julien Sorel is like a ship equipped for a long voyage, and the fire of ambition in other social conditions, providing scope for the creative energy of the masses, would help him overcome the most difficult voyage.

But now the conditions are not favorable for Julien, and ambition forces him to adapt to other people's rules of the game: he sees that to achieve success, rigid selfish behavior, pretense and hypocrisy, bellicose distrust of people and gaining superiority over them are necessary.

The young plebeian is in the grip of an illusion: he, alone against everyone, will achieve success, like Napoleon! He, an ambitious man, will stop at nothing!

But natural honesty, generosity, sensitivity, which elevate Julien above his environment, conflict with what ambition dictates to him under existing conditions.

On the basis of this contradiction, the complexity of the character and personality of the young “madman” is formed...

Some romantics, expressing disgust at the base prose of the vulgar bourgeois system, glorified alienation from society. “Solitude is sacred,” exclaimed Vigny. “Oh thrice sacred loneliness!” Musee echoed him.

“The mutual and comprehensive dependence of individuals, indifferent to each other, forms their social connection” * generated by the capitalist economy. Romantic individualists, poeticizing mutual indifference, imagined that they were thus calling for the protection of individual rights from social relations hostile to it, rebelling against dependence on them. In reality, the individualist is only trying to fully adapt to these relations. Such individualism was - and remains - imaginary self-defense individual from society, self-deception generated by illusion.

* (K. Marx, Chapter on Money, Archive of Marx and Engels, vol. IV, Partizdat, M. 1935. p. 87.)

Even before the revolution of 1830, objective observers saw that in bourgeois society itself, which was despised by romantic individualists, the same individualism flourished, but in the form of a wolfish struggle for success. In France, “chagun pour soi” * is the foundation of wisdom instilled in children.” “This existence for oneself is the primary source of all the evils that befell the French,” we read in a letter from France, published in 1829 in the Moscow “Bulletin of Natural Sciences.” and medicine" (No. 7).

* (Every man for himself (French).)

And for Julien, loneliness is the illusion of liberation from the cage. But, as we already know, he dreams of solitude not for self-defense, but for victory. “Every man for himself” is his motto. In the mountains, standing on a high cliff, Julien envies a sparrowhawk, a feathered predator, soaring above him. If a young man becomes like a hawk, he will truly rise above everyone. “This was Napoleon’s fate—perhaps the same awaits me?” - thinks Julien.

The idea of Napoleon's fate is connected in the novel with the image of a hawk (and not an eagle or falcon). The image of an eagle usually gives rise to a poetic idea of greatness, the image of a falcon - of courage. Bayle in his youth called Bonaparte "Kite", but not an eagle or a falcon. Then he hated the First Consul - a tyrant who was alien to true greatness because he stole freedom from France. Although now Stendhal the publicist demonstratively contrasts the “great emperor” with the new insignificant rulers, in work of art his “poetic justice” tells him otherwise: he again compares the famous careerist, whose example gave rise to “crazy and, of course, ill-fated ambition” in France *, not with the “king of the birds,” but simply with a bird of prey.

* (“Walking around Rome” (italics mine - Ya. F.).)

The hawk seems to Julien Sorel the embodiment of strength and loneliness. To escape from the cage, to defeat countless enemies and achieve success, you must become lonely and strong, like a predator. And you need to be vigilant, ready to attack at any moment. Julien's motto: "To arms!" To the reader, he does not seem like boyish fanfare: Julien is purposeful and always takes his words and actions very seriously. Loneliness and ambition deprived him of fun (only in the company of his beloved woman, Madame de Renal, will he learn what it is). They deprived him of real youth: he anxiously weighs every word, fearing involuntary spontaneity, forced to be wise, like a serpent. Loneliness and pride taught Julien to appreciate the help of weapons. And when it seems to him that he is obliged to defend his honor, he will turn his weapon - against Madame de Renal! But not as a predator, but as Sid, for he has no doubt that honor is most valuable. We do not know whether Julien read Corneille's tragedy; but young Henri Bayle admired her.

The through-and-through action of the ambitious Julien Sorel was typical of the era. Claude Liprandi notes that many pamphleteers, historians, journalists, and political publicists wrote with indignation during the Restoration years about careerism, the brutal struggle for a place in the sun, as “the abomination of the century.” The hero of “Red and Black,” reminds K. Liprandi, “is characteristic of his time,” “deeply truthful.” And the writers of Stendhal’s era saw that the image of Julien was “truthful and modern” *. But many were confused by the fact that the author of the novel boldly, unusually clearly and vividly expressed the historical meaning of the topic, making his hero not a negative character, not a sneaky careerist, but a gifted and rebellious plebeian, whom the social system deprived of all rights and thus forced to fight for them , regardless of anything.

* (S. Liprandi, Au coeur du "Rouge", pp. 292-293.)

Stendhal consciously and consistently contrasts Julien's outstanding talents and natural nobility with his “ill-fated” ambition. We see what objective circumstances determine the crystallization of the militant individualism of a talented plebeian. We are also convinced of how destructive the path that ambition pushed him turned out to be for Julien’s personality.

6

Julien stands out in Verrieres: his extraordinary memory amazes everyone. Therefore, the rich man de Renal needs it as another pleasure of vanity, for Verrieres it is a considerable one, although smaller than the walls around the mayor’s gardens. Unexpectedly for himself, the young man settles in the house of an enemy: he is a tutor in the de Renal family...

Woe to him who is careless in the camp of enemies! “Do not show kindness, be vigilant, careful and ruthless,” Napoleon’s student orders himself. In his internal monologues, he again and again tries to penetrate the secret, true thoughts of everyone with whom life encounters him, and constantly criticizes himself, developing his line of behavior - the surest tactics. He wants to be always directed towards his goal - like a naked blade. He will win if he sees through his opponents, and they will never figure him out. Therefore, one should not trust any person and be wary of love, which dulls mistrust. Julien's main tactical weapon should be pretense.

In 1804, the reactionary theater critic Geoffroy attacked Moliere's comedy Tartuffe with hatred. During the years of the Restoration, Tartuffe was often published, even in mass circulation: even now it participated in the struggle of liberals against the ultra-reactionaries, the Congregation, and the insidious hypocrisy of the Jesuits. In those cities where missionaries were especially zealous in returning residents to the fold of the church and inviting them to the path of repentance and humility, tickets for performances of Tartuffe were most quickly sold out. This was the case in Rouen, Lyon, and Brest. In Rouen and Brest, the authorities banned this performance, and the indignation of the public was so great that soldiers were called in and cleared the theater hall, pushing back the townspeople with guns with fixed bayonets. Nothing like this could happen even at the “scandalous” premiere of Ernani. The satire of Tartuffe sounded more topical (which is why it was banned). “Tartuffe,” unlike Marivaux’s plays, “will live in 1922,” wrote Stendhal (Corr., II, 280).

Julien twice mentions his second teacher, Tartuffe. The young man knows his role by heart.

Julien, says the author of the novel, is noble and courageous. And in the 19th century, powerful people, if they do not kill the courageous, throw them into prison, condemn them to exile, and subject them to unbearable humiliation. Julien is lonely and can only rely on cunning. He understands that he will die by revealing his face, giving away his secret - admiration for Napoleon. Therefore, the young man thinks, we must fight hypocrites with their own weapons.

Tartuffe’s behavior is “Jesuitism in action,” wrote Bayle, analyzing Moliere’s comedy in 1813 *. The modern French director Roger Planchon, having staged this play in his theater, showed that the actions of the Jesuit are cynical adventurism, masked by pretense; this interpretation is close to the analysis of “Tartuffe” in Henri Bayle’s notes. So, in order to win the struggle of one against all, Julien Sorel is ready not only to wear a mask, but also to strangle in himself what prevents him from becoming a hypocrite-adventurer, such as his enemies (and Stendhal’s enemies) - the Jesuits. Julien is ready to do anything to succeed. If necessary, Jesuitism will forever become second nature to him! He is alone in the camp of enemies, he is fighting! But will he succeed in becoming Tartuffe?

A poor man, a common man, can no longer become an officer. And now it is not the military who are succeeding, but the priests and bigots in “short cassocks.” The disciples of Joseph de Maistre penetrated into all pores of society. If there are missionaries in the provinces, then in Paris there are “secular” preachers. In one of Stendhal's articles for the English magazine "New Monthly Magazine" there is a laconic sketch of a ball in an aristocratic house in 1826: "A handsome young priest delivers a sermon for forty-five minutes in a gentle and melancholic tone. Then he leaves, and the ball begins." It didn't happen that way theater stage, not in the new Tartuffe, but in life. The Bishop of Agde, whose youth struck Julien, is surprisingly similar to this handsome and exquisitely melancholy priest: after all, he effortlessly achieved a higher “position in society than Napoleon’s marshals, scorched by the gunpowder of bloody battles! This means that religion is a field in which Julien is obliged to make a brilliant career!

He had already memorized the New Testament in Latin and the book “On the Pope” by de Maistre (“believing it just as little” as the first). Who else is capable of such a feat? The benevolent and strict Abbot Shelan will help Julien enter the seminary.

But it is painfully difficult for a proud, intelligent, passionate young man to wear the mask of humility and stupid hypocrisy - the “uniform” of a rootless ambitious man in the era of the Restoration. Will he be able to always pretend and achieve success, regardless of anything? "Oh Napoleon, how wonderful it was your time, when men won their position through the dangers of battle! But to make his way through meanness, increasing the suffering of the poor..." A noble plebeian is not capable of this.

Julien enters the seminary as if entering a prison. “There are only fierce enemies all around. And what a hellish work this is... - every minute hypocrisy. Yes, it will overshadow all the exploits of Hercules!” He “weakly succeeded in his attempts to be hypocritical with facial expressions and gestures...” “He could achieve nothing, and even in such a vile craft.” He mercilessly rapes himself: it is not easy to become a Jesuit Tartuffe.

Stendhal considered the chapters devoted to the seminary - a satirical picture that gives the impression of the most objective research - to be the most successful in the novel. This high rating is probably explained not only by the strength of the satire, but also by the fact that the writer surprisingly plastically and accurately depicted Julien’s life in the seminary as a battle in which the young man defeats himself. Only extraordinary person, says the author of the novel. Julien's iron will suppresses his fierce pride and freezes his ardent spirit. To make a career, he will be the most impersonal of the seminarians, dispassionate and soulless, like an automaton. A young man, capable of heroic deeds, decides to commit moral suicide.

Julien's battle with himself is the most important aspect of the novel.

The hero of Pushkin's "Queen of Spades", Hermann is a young ambitious man "with the profile of Napoleon and the soul of Mephistopheles." And he, like Julien, “had strong passions and a fiery imagination.” But internal struggle is alien to him. He is calculating, cruel and with all his being is directed towards his goal - the conquest of wealth. He really does not take anything into account and is like a naked blade.

Perhaps Julien would have become the same if he himself had not constantly appeared as an obstacle in front of him - his noble, ardent, proud character, his honesty, the need to surrender to immediate feeling, forgetting about the need to be calculating and hypocritical. Julien's life is the story of his unsuccessful attempts to fully adapt to social conditions in which base interests triumph. The “spring” of drama in the works of Stendhal, the heroes of which are young ambitious people, says the French writer Roger Vaillant in the book “The Experience of Drama,” “lies entirely in the fact that these heroes “are forced to rape their rich nature to play the vile role that they have imposed on themselves." (Julien's nature) and base (his tactics dictated by social relations). , in which the young man’s nature prevails. And she more than once wins in situations important for the development of the plot...

* (Roger Vailland, Experience du drame, Correa. Paris, 1953, pp.112-113.)

Stendhal, a friend of Metilde Dembowska, created the most poetic images of women of pure and strong spirit in French realistic literature, captivating with the depth of their experiences and subtle mind. Their moral beauty seems to remind readers: existing social relations are hostile to the flourishing of the personality of most people; but the time will come when the norm in life - everything truly human in people - will triumph.

The image of Madame de Renal differs from other poetic, sublime female characters in the works of Stendhal in that he, to a greater extent than they, is everyday, inseparable from the specifically depicted circumstances of provincial life. And yet it corresponds to the writer’s idea not of the vanity of the “French character”, but of the spontaneity of the “Italian” and akin to the Italian Clelia (“The Monastery of Parma”). Such characters became possible in France after the turbulent revolutionary era, when people's feelings were uninhibited.

Julien comes to the house of his master, de Renal. He is hostilely wary, agitated and, almost for the first time, unsure of himself. Madame de Renal opens the door. She is joyfully amazed: a handsome, timid boy is the formidable tutor who will henceforth have power over her children! He himself is a frightened boy and needs encouragement!.. From this moment begins the process of crystallization of love, sincere, simple-minded, not knowing life women to Julien.

Madame de Renal is not a heroine of adultery. She fell in love for the first time - truly and forever. Julien, not de Renal, is her chosen one, her true husband. Society will consider her love illegal. But it is dominated by hypocrisy and falsehood. She fell in love despite false conventions and is not ashamed of her passion. Happiness reveals the strength of Madame de Renal's holistic character, the core of which is her ability to be infinitely devoted to her beloved. She is ready to challenge dangers every minute. This is the courage of devotion. And this is the “madness” of a woman whom her fiery feeling elevated above the base “prudence” of the calculating de Renal, his rival in the struggle for success - Valno and other pillars of Verrieres society.

But she sinned before God by breaking her vow of fidelity to de Renal. And when her youngest son falls ill, she knows: God has punished her. But she is also devoted to her children. What should be sacrificed - the life of a child or love?.. The accuracy and strength with which the torment of an unhappy (and yet happy, loving) woman is depicted, the physical palpability of all the nuances of violent feelings, never seen before in French literature, is a real triumph of new literature .

The author of the book “On Love” has already mastered the art, with a perfection inaccessible to the novelists of his era, of creating a strong, beautiful character, the core of which is internal action, inseparable from the crystallization of love and the struggle of this feeling with circumstances hostile to it...

At first, Julien is suspicious of Madame de Renal: she is from the camp of enemies. The young man forces himself to seduce her only in order to prove to himself that he is not a coward. But then, in the happiness of being loved by a beautiful and noble woman and loving her passionately, he forgets about tactics. Trusting like her, carefree like a child, he first learns “the bliss of being himself” when communicating with another person.

But this is dangerous: having thrown away the mask, he is unarmed! And again another Julien - cold, embittered - reminds: “To arms!” He must be cunning, living in a world where there is no carefree happiness...

Julien's pride and intelligence rebel against the need to accommodate the smug M. de Renal, successful scoundrels like the impudent thief Valno. But precisely because he fails to suppress his pride, to hide the strength of his character, precisely because every now and then his mental superiority sparkles and his noble impulses triumph, he stands out among the provincial bourgeois, and among seminarians, and among the elegant , but empty aristocrats. He will go far, - Madame de Renal, Abbe Pirard, Marquis de la Mole, and Matilda think about Julien.

Julien, leaving the house of de Renal and Verrieres - for the seminary, and her - for Paris, really makes a dizzyingly rapid climb up the social ladder. And he owes his fabulous success more to his proud, courageous character, his talents, than to tactics and hypocrisy.

But he experienced happiness only in those hours when, loving Madame de Renal, he was himself. Now another Julien is satisfied - an ambitious student of Napoleon.

The story of the relationship between the plebeian conqueror and the aristocrat Matilda, who, like Vanina Vanini, despises spineless secular youth, is unparalleled in the originality, accuracy and subtlety of the drawing, in the naturalness with which the feelings and actions of the heroes in the most unusual situations are depicted.

Julien is madly in love with Mathilde, but does not forget for a minute that she is in the hated camp of his class enemies. Matilda is aware of her superiority over the environment and is ready to do “madness” to rise above it. But her romance is purely in the head. She decided that she would become on par with her ancestor, whose life was full of love and devotion, dangers and risks *. So, in her own way, she accepted the poeticization of the distant historical past in circles close to Charles X. Julien can only take possession of the heart of a rational and wayward girl for a long time by breaking her pride. To do this, you need to hide your tenderness, freeze passion, and prudently use the tactics of the experienced dandy Korazov. Julien forces himself: again he must not be himself. Finally, Matilda's arrogant pride is broken. She decides to challenge society and become the wife of a plebeian, confident that only he is worthy of her love.

* (Alexandre Dumas, following in the footsteps of Stendhal, would subsequently describe in the novel “Queen Margot” the adventures and death of this ancestor of Matilda, the Comte de la Mole.)

But Julien, no longer believing in Matilda’s constancy, is now forced to play the role. But pretending and being happy is impossible.

But the second Julien reached the peak that he dreamed of while standing on the cliff.

7

Could Julien Sorel follow the path of Missirili, the hero of the short story “Vanina Vanini”?

Stendhal says about his hero: “He would be a worthy brother of those conspirators in yellow gloves who want to overturn the entire way of life of a large country and do not want to have the slightest scratch on their conscience” (Italics mine - Ya. F.).

In Verrieres, Julien met only one " decent person": “It was a mathematician named Gros, who was known as a Jacobin.” Only in conversations with him did the young man openly express his thoughts. Gros was the Grenoble geometry teacher of the boy Bayle, a noble poor man, an enlightened man, an impeccable Jacobin revolutionary. The writer retained an enthusiastic attitude throughout his life memory of him. He gave himself the pleasure of talking about Gro in the Life of Henri Brulard, mentioning him in Walks in Rome, and making him a character in The Red and the Black. And in all three cases, Stendhal left Gro his name in order to perpetuate this positive hero of the era, whom he was lucky enough to know personally.

In Paris, Julien becomes close to the emigrant Count Altamira, an Italian carbonari condemned to death. This “yellow-gloved conspirator” has the same basic prototype as Pietro Missirili - Stendhal’s beloved older friend, the Italian revolutionary Domenico Di Fiore. But French literary scholars, not without reason, believe that Stendhal, when creating the image of Altamira, also remembered his other friend, the Carbonari Giuseppe Wismar. K. Liprandi’s guess is also convincing that the writer could not help but know the biography of the Neapolitan officer Antonio Galotti, who was condemned to death three times by the reaction (he was then written about in all newspapers). The images created by Stendhal were never “copies”.

The Spanish carbonari Don Diego Bustos says to Julien: “Altamira told me that you are one of ours.” Just like the author of the novel, Altamira thinks that Julien's real place is among the revolutionaries.

The theme of the coming revolution is one of the leitmotifs of the novel. Both Madame de Renal and Mathilde think about the inevitability of the revolution, confident that when it breaks out, Julien will become the new Danton. Julien, talking with Altamira (expressing the thoughts of Stendhal himself), feels that his element is revolution. He would not be deterred by the need to shed blood in the name of justice; he, unlike Altamira, could “execute three to save four.”

But these are dreams. But Julien’s life path is different. And “our indignant plebeian” is not the modest and selfless Missirili. Reflecting on the future revolution, he dreams of “glory for himself and freedom for everyone.” Glory for yourself comes first. And in the dreams of Missirili, Altamira and Stendhal himself, the common good comes first. Julien, smarter, more talented and stronger than Missirili, hates inequality. But he descended to Altamira from the cliff on which he envied the strength and loneliness of the hawk. A disciple of Napoleon, poisoned by ambition, he knows: “Everyone is for himself in this desert of selfishness called life.” And while making a career, he accustoms himself to be arrogant and indifferent even to those whom he deeply respects.

He, the secretary of the powerful Marquis de la Mole, “thought it was funny” that he could now provide patronage. Laughing, he made the elderly and insane scoundrel de Cholin the manager of the lottery office in Verrieres. As soon as de Cholin was appointed, Julien learned that a deputation from the department had already asked for a position for the “famous mathematician” Gros. This noble man gave part of his small rent to a recently deceased office manager, burdened with a large family. Having received an office, Gro could support his family. “How will they live now?” - thinks Julien - the one whom Altamira considers her like-minded person. “His heart sank...” But then the second Julien takes the floor - the one who knows: every man for himself. “It’s nothing,” he said to himself, “I never have to commit all sorts of injustices if I want to succeed...”

Julien Sorel could have taken part in the July Revolution if he had followed the path of Altamira and Missirili. But the desire to succeed and circumstances pushed the ambitious man onto a different path. A week before those “three glorious days” of July 1830, when the Parisians stormed the Bourbon monarchy, Julien Sorel stormed the palace of the Marquis de la Mole in his own way: he climbed the ladder into the room of the marquis’s daughter and became her lover. After the July Revolution, when the democrats feared that the people would be deceived by the bourgeoisie, Julien had his own worries: the wayward Matilda had lost interest in him and hated him! In August - September 1830, Julien cleverly, courageously, with amazing self-control and dexterity carried out the dangerous assignment of the leaders of the ultra party, ready to flood France with blood. Internally alien to the camp of enemies of the revolution, the young careerist does not hesitate to serve him and connect his fate with him. A valuable acquisition for the decrepit class of aristocrats. And Julien, who considers himself like-minded with Altamira, should already be clear that he is becoming more and more entangled in the snares of circumstances and will not become the new Danton. The first Julien is happy when he secretly dreams of revolution; he is with the “madmen” Altamira and Missirili. The second Julien is clearly subordinate to the enemies of the revolution and these “madmen”. And the obvious triumphs.

Julien Sorel is not Pietro Missirili. The pride of a talented poor man-ambitious and the pride of a poor man-patriot, revolutionary - are not the same thing.

However, let’s listen to what the author says about the hero of the novel: “He was still very young, but, in my opinion, there was a lot of good in him”; while so many people who are sensitive in youth then become cunning, Julien “would gradually acquire sympathetic kindness with age...”. Responsiveness is the main characteristic feature of a real person, to whom, like the Jacobin Gro, the common good is dearer than anyone else.

Under what conditions could Julien, whose character is formed until the very end of the novel, become such a person? Being the son-in-law of the almighty Marquis de la. Mol. - an arrogant upstart? Hardly.

Already after the July Revolution, in March 1831, Stendhal spoke in one of his letters about a new, coming revolution, not bourgeois, but popular in content and scope: it is inevitable, and “two hundred thousand Julien Sorels living in France” (Corr., III , 42), talented plebeians who remember well how the non-commissioned officer Augereau became a general in the Republican army, and the clerks of the prosecutors - senators and counts of the Empire - won a place in life, overthrowing the power of the mediocre upper classes.

And, participating in such a popular revolution, Julien would dream of “glory for himself,” and not just freedom for everyone. But then the noble traits of his character could triumph - those that were sung after the revolution of 1830 by the poet of “two hundred thousand Julien Sorels” - Pétrus Borel. If everything had been “turned over” in the same way as in 1793, the revolutionary struggle of the people who had won freedom and heroically defended it would probably have gradually re-educated Julien.

But in the novel, Julien's rebirth remains a purely speculative possibility. "The Follies" of Julien Sorel only help him adapt to social relations that disfigure his nature...

"Red" is not only Julien's unrealizable dreams of military exploits, glory, but also the proud, fiery soul of Julien, the fire of his energy, his noble blood of the poor, shed by the rich. “Black” is not only the darkness of the Restoration, the Jesuits, the attire of Julien the seminarian, but also the hypocrisy that the young man wanted to make his second nature, although it was alien to him, and which distorted his nature, crippled his life. “Red” is also the revolutionary fervor of the dreams of Julien, Altamira’s friend, “black” is his participation in the secret conspiracy of the ultra party... *

* (Literary scholars have long been trying to decipher the symbolism of the name “Red and Black”. Here are three of the most interesting interpretations. Prof. B. G. Reizov sees the source of the title of the novel in its “prophetic scenes”: in the first, taking place before the start of Julien’s career, the young man reads on a piece of newspaper, picked up in a church, about the execution of a certain Jeanrel; at this time the sun, breaking through the crimson curtains on the church windows, casts a reflection that gives the holy water the appearance of blood (prediction of murder); in the second scene - the first appearance of Matilda in deep mourning, in which she will be after the execution of Julien (a prophecy of punishment for murder) (Prof. B. Reizov, Why Stendhal called his novel "Red and Black." - " New world", 1956, No. 8, pp. 275-278). According to the Italian scientist Luigi Foscolo Benedetto, “red” symbolizes Julien’s state of mind when he, standing on a cliff, dreams of becoming a worthy disciple of Napoleon; “black” symbolizes the collapse of Julien’s illusions , who is in prison. In the first case, writes Benedetto, Napoleonic France, its victories and glory, seems to appear to Julien’s gaze, in the second, the France of the Jesuits and its darkness (Luigi Foscolo Benedetto, La Chartreuse noire. Comment naquait "La Chartreuse de Parme", Firenze, 1947, pp. 24-25). Academician V. V. Vinogradov introduced both the title and content of the novel "Red and Black" into a semantic series associated with the motives of "game" - "chance" - "fate" , which is challenged by the “player”: “The roulette or card term in the title already sets the understanding of artistic reality in the aspect gambling. And Julien Sorel, who wanted to follow the path of Napoleon, loses all bets in this game" (V.V. Vinogradov, Style of the Queen of Spades. - "Pushkin. Temporary of the Pushkin Commission. Academy of Sciences of the USSR", 2, ed. Academy of Sciences of the USSR, M. -L. 1936, pp. 100-101). The guess is witty, but simplifies Julien’s character.)

Julien rejected the opportunity to live independently, away from the rich and noble - he refused to become the companion of his devoted friend Fouche. This is not what the ambitious man dreamed of. And he believed in his star. And now he is a brilliant officer, a dandy and an aristocrat from head to toe, a rich man. He is Monsieur de la Verneuil, the fiancé of Mathilde de la Mole. Let them now compete with him, with his vital energy graceful and characterless secular young people!

The false letter that the Jesuit priest dictated to Madame de Renal, tormented by jealousy, overthrows Julien from this peak. The action of the novel rushes towards a tragic denouement.

If Julien had been like the hero of “The Queen of Spades,” he might have decided to take money from Matilda’s father and go to America. But he is as if possessed and obeys only his frantic pride. He was insulted! He will take revenge!..

Julien the officer shoots Madame de Renal in the church. And now “the state of physical irritation and half-madness in which he was going from Paris to Verrieres ceased.” After a fiery explosion of energy - deep dream exhausted Julien the prisoner. This episode was written by Stendhal the physiologist, an attentive reader of Pinel and Brousset, who did not forget for a moment about Julien’s extraordinary sensitivity, receptivity, nervousness, the subtlety, responsiveness, and excitability of his psychophysical organization.

It's hard to get used to the idea that everything you've experienced is over. But that's how it is. Julien is proud and therefore decides: he must pay for his crime with his life. And now, when he only wants to die with dignity, the second Julien - the ambitious one - has nothing more to dream about, nothing to do on earth. For the prisoner, everything that the ambitious man won with such efforts and suddenly lost is unreal. In prison, a young man matures and at the same time finally becomes himself. How good it is that you no longer have to think about tactics, be cunning, or pretend!

At the beginning of the novel there is an image of a cage society. In the last chapters there is a prison cell. The tragic theme of prison in “The Red and the Black”, its gloomy and proud poetry are associated with one of the romantic motifs in Stendhal’s work. In a prison cell real man who hates the hypocrisy and cruelty of rulers and their servants, feels internally incomparably freer than those who adapt to them. He can gain philosophical clarity of thought by despising the world of falsehood and oppression. The philosopher Van, whom Julien visited in a London prison, is “the only cheerful man” met by the hero of the novel in England.

And Julien gradually acquires a philosophical state of mind. Everything superficial and ugly flies off of him like husks. Astute as never before, he reviews his life, soberly looks at himself from the outside, calms Matilda, who is almost mad with grief and jealousy, whose love has also become a thing of the past.

Every day, for hours, Julien talks to himself. He says to himself: having become the husband of Matilda de la Mole, in case of war he would have been a hussar colonel, and in (peacetime) secretary of the embassy, then ambassador in Vienna, in London. What a wonderful career! This is what he could dream of, if not for a completely urgent meeting with the guillotine. The fact that Julien, at the thought of this, is able to laugh “with all his heart” is for Stendhal the greatest proof of the strength and greatness of the spirit of the carpenter’s son.

According to the law on retribution for sacrilege, Julien can be severely punished: he attempted murder in the church. Well, he saw the king, and soon he will see the executioner, the support of the throne. And he already recognized his contemporaries. He mentally settles scores with a society in which successful scoundrels are surrounded by honor. How much higher than the nobility is the simple man Fouquet - honest, straightforward, selfless!.. Now Julien understands: even Napoleon, his idol, was not honest - he humiliated himself on the island of St. Helena to pure charlatanism. Who can you trust? He regrets that he neglected for the sake of an illusion the happiness of living independently in the mountains near Verrieres...

Now only Julien truly surrenders selflessly to the love that has flared up in his heart again for Madame de Renal. When his girlfriend is with him, he is carefree, like a child. “Let them take us quickly to prison, there we, like birds in a cage, will sing... so together we will live and rejoice,” King Lear, deprived of everything, says to Cordelia after her enemies have captured her too. “Think, I’ve never been so happy!” Julien admits to Madame de Renal. Only now has he learned the art of enjoying life. The cage of society is terrible: even in prison, saying goodbye to life, you can find more joy than in that first cage!..

Stendhal's novel ends with the spiritual enlightenment of Julien, who has now truly risen above both his enemies and himself - the way he was yesterday - looks at life in a new way and sees the social meaning of his tragic fate.

Nineteen-year-old Julien Sorel tremblingly entered the seminary, as if into “earthly hell.” He is twenty-three years old when he most desires to be fearless on the day of his execution. Hell on earth is worse than death.

Julien is informed that almost no one wants him to die. He could have gotten a pardon. But for this I would have to repent, beg, and humiliate myself. No, it’s better to lose your head than to bow it to the successful and triumphant bastard - Baron Valno, chairman of the jury! And Julien asks to be buried in the mountains, not far from his cliff, in his cave, where he dreamed of loneliness and strength, of exploits and victory. There, along with the talented plebeian who believed in Napoleon, his illusions will be buried.

Even the Jesuit Frieler admits after the trial that the death of Julien Sorel would be “a kind of suicide.” But at the trial, the hero of "Red and Black", who for so long forced himself to be a hypocrite, throws the whole truth into the faces of his enemies - aristocrats and bourgeois; the first Julien - now the only one - says: he will be executed because he is a commoner who dared to rebel against his low lot; in this way they want to “punish and break once and for all” all those “young people of low birth” who managed to get a good education and penetrate into the environment “which the arrogance of the rich calls good society.”

We know what the implications were for Stendhal in these words: upper classes they fear “two hundred thousand Julien Sorels”; they are dangerous even when they try to adapt to existing social conditions. The judges listened to the proud plebeian as if he were one of those who fought on the barricades at the end of July 1830, who after that endlessly outraged the “rabble” in the cities of France. And they executed Julien, wanting to take revenge on many *.

* (In "Red and Black" there is only one date associated with a specific event: February 25, 1830, the day of the premiere of "Ernani". Approximately dating the episodes of the novel in which the action takes place before and after this day, and about the time intervals between which there are indications in the text, A. Martino constructed a chronological outline of “Red and Black” - from September 1826 to July 25, 1831 (day execution of Julien Sorel). Therefore, if this date is approximately correct, Julien was on trial during the strikes and unrest in Paris and the industrial areas of France, and he was guillotined exactly one year after the July Revolution. And also - almost eight and a half months after the publication of the novel, of which Julien is the hero! This date of Julien Sorel's death is not only spectacular; Unusual, even for a realistic novel alien to copying, the leap into the near future fits without exaggeration into the dialectic of plot development, into the social meaning of “Red and Black,” and into the dialectic of real events. This date sharpens the objective life subtext of the finale: the rich hate, in the person of Julien, all the brave and rebellious poor people who are capable of revolting proletarians.)

A rebel plebeian could not become a “fashionable hero.” In the living rooms there was silence about "Red and Black". Ladies and girls did not dare to read this work even in secret: reactionary criticism recognized the truthfulness of Stendhal's political novel as obscenely cynical *.

* (Just one “tactless” angry phrase from Julien about the environment, “which the arrogance of the rich calls (my italics - Ya. F.) good society,” was enough to cause irritation and discontent among Stendhal’s acquaintances from this same “good society.” Those ladies who had previously said that this restless Bayle was uncouth and provincial decided that Julien was his self-portrait.)

But the young inhabitants of the sixth floors spent a long time bending over “Red and Black” in their reading rooms.

The novel "The Red and the Black", perhaps the most extraordinary in French literature of the 19th century, sounded like a formidable warning: the time will come when the Julien Sorelys - young plebeians who can passionately dream of a better future and fearlessly fight for their happiness - will be able to find the right one. path!

So Stendhal contrasted the unfair trial of the rich and noble in “The Red and the Black” with the justice of his “poetic justice.”

8

Excerpts from the first chapters of the novel were published on November 4, 1830 by the Parisian "La Gazette litteraire" ("Literary Newspaper"), and ten days later the first two-volume edition of "Red and Black" appeared, dated 1831 (750 copies). The noisy premiere of "Ernani", which took place in the same 1830, is a triumph of French romanticism; The not-everyone-noticed edition of Stendhal's political novel is a victory for French realism of the 19th century.

* (Balzac published “Gobseck” in 1830, “Shagreen Skin” in 1831, “Colonel Chabert” in 1832, and only in 1834 wrote “Père Goriot” - a work that can equal the power of realism with “Red and Black”. In 1831, Daumier began creating his political lithographs.)

In 1830 the power of the big bourgeoisie was politically formalized and, so to speak, consecrated by the institutions of the July Monarchy, which took the place of the Bourbons. The novel “Red and Black,” published after this triumph of the capitalists, sounded like a condemnation of their domination, undeniably motivated historically and politically, by the circumstances of the drama and its social meaning, by the compelling logic in the development of the plot and characters, and by the topicality of this modern chronicle. Surprisingly insightful and courageous, humane and therefore demanding of society and of man, French realism of the 19th century entered people's lives. And the experience of decades has confirmed: this literature is needed by generations - one after another.

However, this is not the case: many of Stendhal’s contemporaries, including enlightened writers, thought. For example, Jules Janin, immediately after the appearance of “The Red and the Black,” ranked this novel as a dark manifestation of subjectivism, subordinate to hypochondria and malice. In an article published by the Journal des Debats in December 1830, J. Janin told readers that Stendhal in “The Red and the Black” pours “his poison” on “everything he comes across - youth, beauty, illusions... flowers"; the world depicted by Stendhal is so ugly that it would be impossible to live in it.

In this review, J. Janin continued the literary polemic that he began a year earlier in the novel “The Dead Donkey, or the Guillotined Woman” (1829). Starting from Stern and parodying sentimentality, narrating ironically and naturally, J. Janin developed some themes typical of physiological essays and some of the motives that would become purely melodramatic in “The Mysteries of Paris” by Eugene Sue. As if flipping through an album with sketches and tiny miniatures, J. Janin vividly and amusingly spoke about those who exist, as it were, outside society (about a “girl for joy,” whose story is the plot core of the book, about a hereditary beggar arrested because he there is no patent on begging, about brothel keepers, respectable mothers of the family, counting income, etc.). In 1829, this should have sounded fresh and sharp (which probably explains Pushkin’s approving review of Janin’s novel).

At the same time, the kaleidoscopic nature and tone of light chatter give “The Dead Donkey” the character of a half-feuilleton, half-fairy tale about the invisible life of a big city, and the feelings, actions of the characters, even the death of the heroine on the scaffold, do not require the reader to take them seriously - just like inserted “anecdotes” "and parables. Janin's novel is a literary work that pretends only to be entertaining and parody.

Parody is also associated with controversy. Having appeared in the preface and moving into the text of the novel, it represents a programmatic feuilleton-pamphlet inserted into it. He attacks writers who neglect imagination and are obsessed with the “passion of being truthful,” depicting what they see, but seeing only what disgusts them. Frankly parodying the frantic romantics, the physiological sketch, and genuine drama, the desire for deep realism, thus smoothing out the differences between them, Janin with a grin shows pictures of the Parisian butchery and the morgue (that's dramatic for you!), piles up "terrible" motives (murder, execution, etc.). Cliches are usually parodied. Janin wanted to create the impression that the truth of life, drama, as such, are literary cliches, nothing more.

Truthfulness is always hostile to the imagination,” Janin exclaims repeatedly, “this is the tendency to seek out “horrors”, invent them, “to pervert everything in the world without pity and mercy - to turn beauty into ugliness, virtue into vice, day into night... ". These words seem to have been taken from Janin’s review of “The Red and the Black.” Not surprising: after all, the motto of the author of this novel is “The truth, the bitter truth,” his imagination is friends with research, and he seriously, deeply and boldly depicted the drama he found in real life society.

"Vanina Vanini"

ITALIAN CHRONICLES:

Vittoria Accoramboni.- Cenci.- Duchess of Pagliano.- Vanina Vanini.- San Francesco a Ripa.

VANINA VANINI,

Details of the last Carbonari Venta opened in the Papal States.

On a spring evening 182* all of Rome was in motion. Duke B***, the famous banker, was giving a ball in his new palace on Venice Square. Everything that the best art of Italy, the luxury of Paris and London could produce, was collected for the decoration of this palace. The crowd of people was enormous. The blond and proud beauties of noble England graced the ball with their presence and appeared in large numbers. The very first Roman beauties challenged them for the primacy of beauty. A young Roman girl, judging by the shine of her eyes and the color of her hair, entered the hall, walking arm in arm with her father. All eyes turned to her. Particular pride was visible in her every movement.

Foreigners entering were amazed at the splendor of this ball. “The holidays given to the kings of Europe cannot compare with this,” they said.

Kings do not have palaces of Roman architecture: they are obliged to invite their court ladies, Duke B*** only accepts pretty women. This evening he was especially lucky; the men were blinded. The question had to be resolved: who is the most beautiful of all these wonderful women. The choice was not made immediately: there was some hesitation. Finally, Princess Vanina Vanini, a young girl with black hair and fiery eyes, was proclaimed queen of the ball. At that very moment, foreigners and young Romans gathered in the hall where she was.

Her father, the prince, Don Asdrubal Vanini, wished that she should first dance with two or three German monarchs. Then, she accepted the invitation of several Englishmen, very beautiful and very noble; their forced tone tired her. Obviously, it was much more pleasant for her to torment young Livio Savelli, apparently very much in love with her. He was the most brilliant young man in Rome and, moreover, a prince; but if he had been given a novel to read, he would have thrown it away before even reaching the twentieth page, saying that it only gave him a headache. In Vanina's eyes, this was an important flaw.

Around midnight at the ball, news spread that made a great impression. From the fortress of St. Angela escaped with the help of a young carbonari in disguise. Having reached the last prison guard, he, with the most unbridled daring, attacked the soldiers with a sword, but he himself was wounded and the levies are tracking him through the streets following the traces of his blood and it is hoped that they will catch him.

While this story was being told, Don Livio Savelli, blinded by the charms and successes of Vanina, with whom he had just danced, said to her, escorting her to her place:

But, for God's sake, tell me, who could you like?

This young carbonari, who has just escaped, answered Vanina; but at least he did something more than take the trouble to be born.

Prince Don Asdrubal approached his daughter. He was a rich man who had not settled with his managers for twenty years, who gave him his own income at high interest. If you meet him on the street, you will certainly take him for an old comedian; you won't even notice that his fingers are decorated with several rings with very large diamonds. Two of his sons entered the Jesuit order and died crazy. He forgot them; but he is very unpleasant that his only daughter Vanina does not want to get married. She is already nineteen years old, and she has refused the most brilliant parties. What is the reason for this? The same one that made Silla recant: her contempt for the Romans.

On the next day of the ball, Vanina noticed that her father, the most careless of people and never holding a key in his hands, was with great care locking the door of the small staircase leading to the rooms on the third floor. The windows of these rooms looked out onto a terrace lined with orange trees. Vanina went to make visits; returning, she had to enter the back courtyard, since the main gates of the palace were cluttered with preparations for the illumination. Vanina looked up and was surprised to see that the window of one of the rooms, locked by her father with such care, was open. She hastened to remove her companion; went up to the people's rooms of the palace and finally found a small lattice window opening onto the terrace. The open window she noticed was two steps away. Of course, this room was inhabited, but by whom? The next day Vanina managed to get the key to a small door opening onto the same terrace.

On tiptoe she approached the still open window. The curtain helped her to hide. At the back of the room there was a bed and someone was lying on it. Her first move was to leave, but she noticed a woman's dress thrown on a chair. Peering more closely at the person lying on the bed, she saw that she was blond and very young; Vanina no longer doubted that she was a woman. The dress lying on the chair was bloody; blood was also visible on the woman’s shoes. The stranger made a movement; Vanina saw that she was wounded. A large towel, stained with blood, covered her chest; this towel was attached, only with ribbons; Of course, it was not the hand of the surgeon who made this dressing. Vanina noticed that her father locked himself in his room every day for about four hours and went up to see the stranger; a few minutes later he descended and rode in a carriage to Countess Witteleski. As soon as he left, Vanina ran up to the terrace, from which she could see the stranger. Her sensibility was greatly aroused in favor of this young woman, apparently so unhappy; she tried to guess what could have happened to her. The bloody dress lying on the chair had apparently been pierced by a sword. Vanina could count all the holes.

One day, she saw the stranger more clearly; her blue eyes were turned to the sky; she was definitely praying. Soon tears filled her wonderful eyes; the young princess could hardly restrain herself from speaking to her. The next day Vanina dared to hide on the terrace until her father arrived. She saw Don Asdrubal enter the stranger's room; he was carrying a small basket of provisions. The prince was obviously in great anxiety; he said only a few words and passed so quietly that although the balcony door was open, Vanina could not calculate anything. He soon left.

This woman must have very terrible enemies if my father, always so careless, does not dare to trust anyone and takes the trouble to climb one hundred and twenty steps every day.

One evening, when Vanina carefully poked her head toward the stranger’s window, she met her eyes and everything was open. Vanina fell to her knees and screamed:

I love you, I am devoted to you.

The stranger motioned for her to enter.

How I should apologize to you! exclaimed Vanina, oh how insulting my stupid curiosity must seem! I swear; that I will keep your secret and, if you demand it, I will never return to you;

Who wouldn't feel happy seeing you? said the stranger. Do you live in this palace?

Of course, Vanshga answered. But I see that you don't know me. I am Vanina, daughter of Don Asdrubal.

The stranger looked at her in surprise, blushed very much and added:

Make me happy with the hope that I will see you every day, but I wish; so that the prince does not know about your visits.

Vanina’s heart was beating fast; The stranger's manners seemed to her full of dignity. This poor woman had probably offended some powerful man; perhaps in a moment of jealousy, sleep, she killed her lover? Vanina could not admit an ordinary reason for her misfortune. The stranger told her that she had been wounded in the shoulder and that the wound reached her chest and was tormenting her greatly. Her mouth often fills with blood.

Well, you don't have a surgeon? Vanina exclaimed.

You know that in Rome surgeons are obliged to report to the police all the wounds they treat. The prince is so kind that he bandages my wounds himself.

The stranger avoided talking about her adventure with greater grace. Vanina fell in love with her madly. However, she was very surprised when, in the middle of the most serious conversation, the stranger could barely restrain herself from a sudden desire to laugh.

“I would be happy to know your name,” Vanina said.

My name is Clementine.

And so, dear Clementine, tomorrow at five o’clock I will come to you.

The next day Vanina found her new friend in a very bad state.

“I want to bring you a surgeon,” she said, accusing her.

I agree it's better to die. Do I really want to compromise my benefactors?

The surgeon to Bishop Savelli Catanza, governor of Rome, the son of one of our servants, Vanina objected with liveliness; he is devoted to us and, due to his position, is not afraid of anyone. The father does not give sufficient justice to his fidelity; I'll send for him.

I don't want a surgeon! cried the stranger with a liveliness that surprised Vanina. Visit me, and if God pleases to call me to himself, I will die happy in your arms.

The next day the stranger felt even worse.

If you love me, Vanina said as she left, you will call the surgeon.

If he appears, my happiness will disappear.

“I went for some wine,” Vapina objected.

Without saying a word, the stranger took her hand and covered it with kisses. They were silent for a long time; the stranger had tears in her eyes. Finally, she released Vanina’s hand and said in an excited voice, as if she was going to her death:

I have a calling to make for you. On the third day I lied, saying that my name was Clementine; I'm a miserable carbonari...

Surprised, Vanina pushed back her chair and soon stood up.

I feel, continued the carbonari, that this confession will make me lose the only happiness that binds me to life; but deceiving you is not worthy of me. My name is Pietro Misirilli; I am nineteen years old; my father is a poor surgeon in Sant'Angelo in Vado, and I am a Carbonari. Our vent was opened; I was led in chains from Romagna to Rome. Thrown into a prison illuminated by a lamp day and night, I spent thirteen months there. One generous soul decided to help me escape. They dressed me as a woman. Leaving the prison and passing by the guards: at the last doors, one of the soldiers pronounced a curse on the Carbonari; I slapped him. I assure you that this was not empty bravado, but absent-mindedness. After this indiscretion, pursued at night through the streets of Rome, wounded, losing strength, I ran into a house whose doors were open; I hear the soldiers rising up behind me, I jump into the garden and fall at the feet of a walking woman.

Countess Witteleski! my father's friend, Vanina said.

How! did she tell you? cried Misirilli. Be that as it may, this lady, whose name should never be spoken, saved my life. When the soldiers came in to seize me, your father took me away in his carriage through another gate. I feel very thin; For several days now this sword blow to the chest has been preventing me from breathing. I will die in despair because I will never see you again.

Vanina listened with impatience; she hurriedly went out: in her beautiful eyes Misirilli did not find a drop of pity, but only one wounded pride.

By nightfall the surgeon appeared; he was alone. Misirilla was in despair; he was afraid that he would never see Vanina again. He approached the surgeon with several questions; he bled him and did not answer. There was also silence in the following days. Pietro's eyes did not leave the terrace window, into which Vanina always entered; he was very unhappy. Once, around midnight, someone appeared to him in the darkness of the terrace: was it Vanina?

Vanina came every night and looked out the window at the young carbonari.

If I talk to him, she told herself, I’m lost! No, I shouldn't see him anymore.

Having made this decision, she involuntarily remembered the friendship that she felt for this young man when she was stupid enough to mistake him for a woman. After such a pleasant relationship, he had to be forgotten. In her most prudent moments, Vanina was frightened by the change that had occurred in her thoughts. Since Misirilli named himself, all the objects that she was used to thinking about seemed to be covered in fog, and were only visible in the distance.

Less than a week had passed when Vanina, pale and trembling, entered the Carbonari’s room with the surgeon. She came to tell him that he needed to persuade the prince to replace himself with a servant. She stayed no more than ten seconds, but a few days later, she came again out of philanthropy. One evening, although Misirilli was much better and Vanina no longer had anything to fear for his life, she dared to come alone. Seeing her, Misirilli was at the height of bliss, but tried to hide his love; What he wanted most of all was to maintain the dignity befitting a man. Vanina came to him with a blush of shame on her face and with fear of a declaration of love; the friendship, noble and devoted, but far from tender, with which he met her somewhat disappointed her. She soon left and he did not think to keep her.

A few days later she returned and found the same restraint, the same assurances of devotion, respect and eternal gratitude. Not at all wanting to restrain the young man’s enthusiasm, Vanina asked herself if she really loved alone? This young girl, until then so proud, bitterly felt the full depth of her madness. She pretended to be cheerful and even cold, came less often, but could not bring herself to stop visiting.

Misirilli, burning with love, but not forgetting his dark origin and his responsibilities towards himself, promised himself not to tell Vanina about love unless she visited him within eight days. The young princess's pride gave way step by step.

Well, well! - she said to herself, “if I see him, then it is for myself, for the sake of the pleasure that he gives me, and I will never admit to him the feeling that he inspires in me.”

She made long visits to Misirilli, who spoke to her in the presence of as many as twenty people. One day she felt nothing but hatred for him all day and decided to be even stricter and colder than usual towards him, and in the evening she admitted that she loved him. Soon she had no reason to refuse him.

Despite all her madness, Vanina was completely happy. Misirilli no longer cared about what he considered a man's dignity; he loved as one loves for the first time at the age of nineteen, and even in Italy. The subtle delicacy of his love and passion reached the point that he confessed to this proud princess how he made her love him. He was surprised at the excess of his happiness. Four months flew by completely unnoticed. Finally, the surgeon released his patient to freedom. What will i do? thought Misirilli; hiding with one of the most beautiful women in Rome? And the vile tyrants who kept me for thirteen months without sunlight will think that they have broken me! Italy, you are truly unhappy if your sons leave you because of such trifles! Vanina had no doubt that the greatest happiness for Pietro was life next to her; he seemed too happy; but one word from General Bonaparte resounded bitterly in the young man’s ears and influenced his attitude towards women. In 1796, when General Bonaparte was leaving Brescia, the municipality accompanying him told him that the Brescia people loved freedom more than all other Italians.

Yes,” he answered, “she likes to talk about her to her mistresses.”

Misirilli said to Vanina with some concern:

As soon as night falls, I need to leave.

Try to be back before sunrise; I'll be waiting for you.

At sunrise I will be several miles from Rome.

“Great,” Vanina said coldly, “and where will you go?”

To Romagna to avenge himself.

“Since I’m rich,” Vanina objected very calmly, “I hope that you will take weapons and money from me.”

Misirilli did not take his eyes off her for several minutes, then, rushing to her, he said:

My life, you make me forget everything, even my duty. But the nobler your heart, the more you should understand me.

Vanina cried a lot, and they decided that he would leave Rome only after tomorrow.

Pietro,” she said to him the next day, “you often told me that a famous person, a Roman prince, for example, who might have a lot of money, could render great services to the cause of freedom when Austria is involved in a big war, far from us .

Of course,” said the surprised Pietro.

So, you now have courage, I only lack an important position: I offer you my hand and two hundred thousand livres of annual income. I undertake to obtain my father's consent.

Pietro fell at her feet; Vanina beamed with joy.

“I love you passionately,” he answered; “but I am a poor servant of the motherland; The more unhappy Italy is, the more faithfully I must serve her: in order to obtain the consent of Don Asdrubal, I will have to play a very sad role for whole years. Vanina, I refuse you.

Misirilli hastened to bind himself with these words. His courage almost failed him.

“My whole misfortune is,” he exclaimed, “that I love you more than life itself; that leaving Rome is the worst torture for me. ABOUT! Why has Italy not yet freed itself from the barbarians? With what joy I would go to America.

Vanina really froze. This refusal of her hand struck her pride; but soon she threw herself into the arms of Misirilli.

“You have never seemed so sweet to me,” she exclaimed; “yes, my little village surgeon, I am yours for life.” You are as great as our ancient Romans.

All thoughts of the future, all unpleasant objections of common sense disappeared; it was a moment of perfect love. When it became possible to speak rationally, Vanina said:

I will be in Romagna almost at the same time as you. I will force myself to prescribe baths in Poretto. I will stay at our castle in San Nicolo, near Firli...

“I will live there with you,” Misirilli exclaimed.

From now on I must dare everything,” Vanina said with a sigh. “I will destroy myself for you, but this is nothing... Will you love the girl who died?

“Aren’t you my wife,” exclaimed Misirilli, “and my adored wife for centuries?” I will be able to love and protect you.

Vanina had to go to the ball. As soon as she left Misirilli, he began to find his behavior barbaric,

What is homeland? - he said to himself. - This is not a living being to whom we owe gratitude for good deeds, but an unfortunate creature who can curse us if we do not fulfill our obligation. Homeland and freedom are exactly my cloak, this is a necessary thing for me, which, however, I must buy if I did not inherit it from my father; but, finally, I love my homeland and freedom because they are both useful to me. If I don’t need them as a raincoat in May or August, why buy them, and at such an expensive price? Vanina is so beautiful! Her mind is so extraordinary! Everyone will try to please her; she will forget me. What woman had only one lover? These Roman princes, whom I despise as citizens, have so many advantages over me! How kind they must be! ABOUT! if I leave, she will forget me and I will lose her forever.

At night Vanina came to him, he told her about his doubts, about how his love for her forced him to understand the word homeland. Vanina was very happy.

If he must certainly choose between his homeland and me, then I will have the advantage, she told herself.

The clock of the neighboring church struck three o'clock, and the minutes of the last farewell were approaching. Pietro pulled away from his friend's embrace. He was already going down the small stairs when Vanina, swallowing tears, told him with a smile:

If a poor village girl looked after you, would you really not thank her? Would you try to pay her? The future is wrong, you are going to your enemies: give me three days out of gratitude, as if I were a poor woman and you want to pay me for my worries about you.

Misirilli remained. Finally he left Rome. He came to his family with a passport purchased at a foreign embassy. It was great joy; he was considered dead. Friends wanted to celebrate his return by killing one or two carabinieri (as the gendarmes are called in the Papal States).

“We will not needlessly kill an Italian who knows how to handle weapons,” said Misirilli; “our homeland is not an island, like happy England; we need soldiers to repel the intervention of European sovereigns.

Some time later, Misirilli, overtaken by the carabinieri, killed two with the pistols that Vanina gave him. His head was assessed.

Vanina did not appear in Romagna; Misirilli considered himself forgotten. His pride was affected, he began to think about the difference in origin that separated him from his beloved. In a moment of sadness and regret about past happiness, he decided to return to Rome and find out what Vanina was doing. This crazy thought almost prevailed over what he considered his duty when one evening he heard the bell of one of the mountain churches ringing Angelus in a special way, as if the bell-ringer had been absent-minded. This was the signal for the meeting of the Venta Carbonari, which Misirilli joined on his return to Romagna. That same night everyone united in a secluded hut in the forest. Two hermits, drunk on opium, did not notice what their small hut was used for. Misirilli came in a very sad mood; They announced to him that the head of the Venta had been arrested and he, a twenty-year-old youth, should be elected head of the Venta, whose members were people of about fifty who had already participated in conspiracies after Murat's expedition in 1815. At such an unexpected honor, Pietro's heart began to beat violently. Left alone, he decided to no longer think about the young Roman woman who had forgotten him and to devote all his thoughts to the duty of freeing Italy from the barbarians (Liberar l "Italia de" barbari, words of Petrarch in 1350, repeated by Pope Julius II, Machiavell and Count Alfieri.) .

Two days later, Misirilli saw in the report of arrivals and departures, submitted to him as the head of the Venta, that Princess Vanina had arrived at her castle of San Nicolo. This news embarrassed him more than it pleased him. In vain did he think that his loyalty to his homeland would be strengthened if he did not go that same evening to San Nicolo; the thought that he was offending Vanina prevented him from properly fulfilling his duty. He saw her the next day; she still loved him.

Her father, who wanted to marry her off, prevented her from leaving earlier. She brought two thousand sekins. This unexpected help was extremely useful to Misirilli in his new position.

They ordered swords in Corfu, bribed the personal secretary of the legate, whose duties were the persecution of the Carbonari. Thus, a list of priests who served as spies was obtained.

It was then that one of the less insane conspiracies of which there were so many in unfortunate Italy was formed. I will not go into inappropriate details here and will limit myself to the observation that if the enterprise had been crowned with success, then most of the glory should have gone to Misirilli. Thanks to him, at the first signal, several thousand insurgents were supposed to appear and, arms in hand, await the arrival of the highest commanders. The decisive moment was approaching when, as always happens, the conspiracy was paralyzed by the arrest of the leaders.

Arriving in Romagna, Vanina thought that love for her homeland would drown out any other love in her friend. The pride of the young Roman woman was indignant. She tried in vain to reason with herself. She became terribly sad and often cursed freedom. One day, having come to Forli on a date with Misirilli, she could no longer restrain her grief, which until then she had hidden out of pride.

Indeed,” she said, “you love me like a husband; I do not need this.

Soon the tears began to flow; but these were tears of shame because she had stooped to reproaches. Misirilli responded to these tears like a concerned man. Suddenly Vanina got the idea to leave him and return to Rome! She found special pleasure in punishing herself for the weakness that forced her to speak. After several minutes of silence, she made up her mind; she would have been unworthy of Misirilli if she had not left him. She thought with pleasure about the sad surprise when he would look in vain for her beside him. Soon the thought that she could not inspire the love of the man for whom she had done so many stupid things saddened her deeply. Then she broke the silence and tried to do everything in the world to snatch from him at least one word of love. He absentmindedly said very tender things to her, but the tone of these words was not nearly as deep as when he spoke of his political enterprises; then he exclaimed with grief:

Oh! if this business fails, if the government opens it again, I will give up everything.

Vanina was numb. For an hour now she felt that she saw her lover in last time. The words he spoke cast a fatal ray into her mind. She said to herself:

The Carbonari received several thousand sequins from me. My devotion to the conspiracy cannot be doubted.

She came out of her reverie only to say to Pietro:

Won't you come and spend twenty-four hours with me in San Nicolo? Your meeting this evening does not require your presence. Tomorrow morning we can take a walk in San Nicolo; this will calm your anxiety and restore to you the composure that you so need under these important circumstances.

Pietro agreed.

Vanina left him to make preparations for her departure, locking, as usual, the small room in which she hid him,

She ran to one of her maids, who had left her to get married and set up a small shop in Forlì. Arriving to her, she hastily wrote in the margins of the Book of Hours, which she found in the room, an exact indication of the place where the Venta was to gather that same night. She ended her denunciation with the words: “This venta consists of nineteen members; here are their names and addresses.” Having written everything completely correctly and omitting only the name Misirilli, she said to the woman in whom she was completely sure:

Take this book to the cardinal legate; let him read what is written here and return it to you. Here are ten sequins for you, if the legate ever betrays you, you will die; but you will save my life if you let him read this page.

Everything happened perfectly. The legate was so afraid that he behaved far from like an important dignitary. He allowed a simple woman who wanted to talk to him to come to him in a mask, but on the condition that her hands were tied.

In this position, the merchant was led to the dignitary, whom she found hidden behind a huge table covered with green cloth.

The Legate read the page of the Book of Hours, holding it very far from him, afraid; some subtle poison. He gave the book to the merchant without ordering him to follow her. Not even forty minutes had passed after Vanini returned to Misirilli when she saw the return of her former maid; Now she believed that he belonged entirely to her alone. She told him that there was an extraordinary movement in the city; detachments of carabinieri are shown on streets where they have never been seen before.

If you want to believe me, then we will go to San Nicolo right now.

Misirilli agreed. They walked to the princess's carriage, which was waiting for them half a mile from the city, along with her companion, her silent and generously paid attorney.

Arriving at the castle of San Nicolo, Vanina, embarrassed by her strange prank, became even more tender towards her lover. But her assurances of love now seemed false to her. The day before, during the betrayal, she forgot about remorse. Squeezing her lover in her arms, she said to herself:

There is a word that you just have to say, and he will immediately hate me.

At night, one of Vanina’s servants suddenly entered her room. It was carbonarius, which she did not suspect. Misirilli, therefore, had secrets from her, even down to these details. She trembled. This man came to notify Misirilli that in Forli, at night, the houses of nineteen Carbonari were cordoned off and they themselves were arrested while returning from the Venta. Although taken by surprise, nine escaped. The carabinieri managed to take ten of them to the dungeon of the fortress. Entering it, one of them threw himself into a deep ditch and killed himself.

Vanina lost all self-control; fortunately, Pietro did not notice this; he could read the crime in her eyes...

“At the moment,” added the servant, “the garrison of Forli forms a chain along all the streets.” Each soldier stands so close to his neighbor that he can talk to him. Residents have the right to cross from one side of the street to the other only where officers are standing.

When he left, Pietro thought for a minute.

There’s nothing to do at the moment,” he said finally.

Vanina was out of breath; Misirilli's glances made her tremble.

What's wrong with you? - he asked her.

And now he thought about something else, stopping looking at her. Around noon, she dared to say to him:

Here is another vent open; I assume you will be quiet for a while?

“Very calm,” answered Misirilli with such a smile that she shuddered.

She went to make a necessary visit to the priest of the village of San Nicolo, perhaps a spy for the Jesuits. Returning home at seven o'clock for dinner, she found her lover's small room empty.

Beside herself, she runs to look for him throughout the house; he is nowhere to be found. In despair, she returns to the same room and only then sees the following note:

“I am going to surrender myself into the hands of the legate; I despair of our cause; the sky is against us. Who betrayed us? Probably the scoundrel who threw himself into the ditch. Since my life is useless for unfortunate Italy, I do not want my comrades to see me one is free, they thought that I had betrayed them. Farewell; if you love me, then avenge me, destroy the scoundrel who betrayed us, even if it were my father.”

Vanina sank into a chair, almost losing consciousness and only feeling the most terrible despair. She could not utter a word, her eyes were dry and burning.

Finally she fell to her knees:

Great God! - she exclaimed, - receive my vow; Yes, I will punish the traitorous scoundrel, but first Pietro must be freed.

An hour later she was already on the road to Rome. Her father had been asking her to come back for a long time. During her absence, he arranged her marriage to Prince Livio Savelli. As soon as Vanina arrived, he began to talk about him with trepidation. To his surprise, she agreed from the very first words. That same evening at Countess Vitteleschi's father almost formally introduced Don Livio to her; she talked to him a lot. He was a most brilliant young man, who owned the best horses; Not; despite all her intelligence, this was such a person easy character that he was not at all suspicious of the government. Vanina thought that by turning his head first, she could turn him into a useful agent. Since he was the nephew of Bishop Savelli Catanza, governor of Rome and minister of police, the spies would not dare to follow him.

A few days later, during which she was very kind to Don Livio, Vanina announced to him that he could never be her husband, since in her opinion he was very frivolous.

“If you weren’t a child,” she told him, “your uncle’s agents wouldn’t have secrets from you.” For example, what are they planning to do with the Carbonari who were recently arrested in Forlì?

Two days later Don Livio came to tell her that all the Carbonari who had been detained in Forlì had escaped. She fixed her large black eyes on him with a smile of deepest contempt and did not deign to say a single word to him for the whole evening. A day later, Don Livio, blushing, confessed to her that he had been deceived.

But,” he continued, “I got the key to my uncle’s office; from the papers found there I learned that a congregation (or commission), composed of the most respected cardinals or prelates, meets in the greatest secrecy and deliberates whether to judge the Carbonari in Ravenna or Rome. Nine Carbonari, arrested in Forlì, and their leader, some Misirilli, who had the stupidity to give himself up, are currently being held in the castle of San Leo (Near Rimini in Romagna. The famous Calliostro died in this castle; people say that he was strangled).

At the word stupidity, Vanina pinched the prince with all her might.

“I want to see the official papers myself,” she said, “and enter your uncle’s office; You read it wrong.

At these words Livio trembled; Vanina demanded almost the impossible from him; but the strange genius of this young girl increased his love.

A few days later, Vanina, dressed as a man and in the beautiful livery of the Savelli house, could spend half an hour in the midst of the most secret papers of the Ministry of Police. She made a gesture of great joy when she opened the daily report of the criminal Pietro Misirilli. Her hands trembled while holding this paper. Rereading this name, she almost felt sick.

Leaving the palace of the Roman governor, Vanina allowed Don Livio to kiss her.

“You are coming out of the tests I want to subject you to well,” she said.

After these words, the young prince was ready to set fire to the Vatican in order to please Vanina. That evening there was a ball at the French envoy's. She danced a lot and almost all with him alone.

Don Livio was intoxicated with happiness; it was necessary to prevent him from reasoning.

“My father is sometimes strange,” Vanina once told him; - This morning he drove away his two lackeys who came to me to complain. One asked me to place him with your uncle, the Roman governor; another, who was an artillery soldier under the French, would like to get into the Castle of Sant'Angelo.

“I’m taking them both to myself,” the prince said with liveliness.

Is this what I'm asking of you? - Vanina objected proudly. “I conveyed to you exactly the request of these poor people; they should get what they asked for and nothing else.

Nothing could be more difficult. Bishop Catanzara could least of all be called a frivolous person: he accepted into his service only people well known to him. Vanina, tormented by remorse, was deeply unhappy, although she led a life apparently full of pleasures. The slowness of events was killing her. Her father's manager got her money. Should she have run away from her parents' home and gone to Romagna to try to help her lover escape? No matter how crazy this thought was, she almost brought it to fruition when chance took pity on her.

Don Livio told her:

Ten Carbonari of the Venta Misirilli will be transferred to Rome, but only after the verdict, and will be executed in Romagna. That's what my uncle achieved tonight. You and I alone know this secret. Are you happy?

“You are becoming a man,” answered Vanina; “give me your portrait.”

On the eve of the day when Misirilli was supposed to arrive in Rome, Vanina found an excuse to go to Cita Castellana. Carbonari sent from Romagna to Rome were supposed to spend the night in the prison of this city. She saw Misirilli in the morning when he left prison: he was sitting alone in a cart and was shackled. He seemed very pale to her, but far from discouraged. The old woman threw him a bouquet of violets; Misirilli thanked her with a smile!

Vanina saw her lover, all her thoughts seemed to be renewed; she had new courage. Long ago she delivered an important promotion to Abbot Kari, the chief priest of the castle of St. Angela, where her lover was to be imprisoned; she chose this good priest as her confessor. In Rome it is not an unimportant thing to be the confessor of the princess, the niece of the governor.

The process of the Forli Carbonari did not last long. The extreme party, wanting to take revenge for their transfer to Rome, which it could not prevent in any way, appointed the most ambitious prelates to the commission that was supposed to judge them. Its chairman was the Minister of Police.

The law against the Carbonari is clear: those arrested in Forli could have no hope; nevertheless, they defended their lives in every way. Not only did the judges sentence them to death, but many of them insisted on the most terrible tortures. The Minister of Police, no longer in need of promotion (this place is reserved only for the cardinal's hat), did not want torture at all: in order to submit a verdict to the pope, he replaced the death penalty with several years of imprisonment for all those convicted, except for one Pietro Misirilli. The minister saw him as a dangerous fanatic and, moreover, he had already been sentenced to death for the murder of two carabinieri, which we have already discussed. Vanina learned the verdict and the replacement a few minutes after the minister left the pope.

The next day, Bishop Catanza, returning to his palace around midnight, did not find his footman; Very surprised by this, he called several times; finally the stupid old footman appeared; the annoyed minister began to undress himself. He locked his door; It was very hot in the room: he took off his dress and threw it on a chair. The dress, thrown too hard, flew over the chair, hit the muslin curtain of the window and outlined the shape of a man. The minister rushed to the bed and grabbed the gun. As he returned to the window, a young man approached him, dressed in his livery and with a pistol in his hand. When he saw him, the minister raised the pistol to his eye and began to take aim. The young man said to him laughing:

Well, your Holiness, don’t you recognize Vanina Vanini?

What does this mean silly joke? - the bishop objected furiously.

Let's talk about it, the young girl said calmly. “First of all, your gun is not loaded.”

The surprised minister, checking her words, took out a dagger from his vest pocket.

Vanina told him in a flirtatious, commanding tone:

Let's sit down, Your Eminence.

And she calmly sat down on the sofa.

“Are you at least alone?” asked the minister.

Completely alone, I swear to you! Vanina cried.

The minister was not slow to confirm this; he walked around the room and looked everywhere; then he sat down on a chair three steps from Vanina.

What benefit is there for me,” Vanina began meekly and calmly, “to kill a moderate person, who would probably be replaced by someone weak, with a hot head, capable of destroying himself and others.”

What do you want, madam? - the minister said with annoyance. “I don’t like this scene and should not continue.”

What I’m about to add,” Vanina objected arrogantly, suddenly forgetting her previous politeness, “is more important for you than for me.” They want the life of Carbonari Misirilli to be saved; if he is executed, you will not survive a week. I have no interest in any of this; I did the prank that you reproach me for, firstly, to have fun, and, secondly, to serve one of my friends. “I wanted,” Vanina continued with the same politeness, “I wanted to be useful to an intelligent man who would soon be my uncle and should, apparently, highly raise the well-being of his home.

The minister stopped getting angry: Vanina’s beauty, of course, helped this quick change. In Rome, Bishop Catanza's love for pretty women was well known, and Vanina was charming in the livery of the Savelli house, in well-fitted silk stockings, a red jacket, a sky-blue tailcoat with silver braid and with a pistol in her hand.

“My future niece,” said the minister, almost laughing, “you are doing a great stupidity and probably not the last.”

I hope that such a wise face,” answered Vanina, “will not betray my secret, especially to Don Livio; but to bind you, my dear uncle, I will give you my kiss if you promise the life of my friend’s protégé.

Continuing the conversation in the same half-joking tone with which Roman women know how to conduct the most important matters, Vanina gave this visit, begun with a pistol in her hand, the coloring of the visit made by the young princess Savelli to her uncle, the governor of Ryam.

Soon Bishop Catanzara, despite the arrogance with which he did not allow himself to be intimidated, was already telling his niece all the difficulties that he had encountered in order to save the life of Misirilli. While talking, the minister walked around the room with Vanina; he took the decanter of lemonade that stood on the fireplace and poured it into a crystal glass. He was already preparing to bring the drink to his lips when Vanina took it and, holding it for a while, dropped it into the garden, as if out of absent-mindedness. A minute later, the minister took a chocolate candy from the bomboniere; Vanina took it away and said laughing:

Beware, everything is poisoned for you; after all, they wanted your death. It was I who begged forgiveness from my future uncle in order to enter the Savelli family not completely empty-handed.

Bishop Catanzara was very surprised, thanked his future niece and showed great hope for the life of Misirilli.

Our deal is over! - Vanina cried, “to prove this, here is my reward,” she said, hugging him.

The minister accepted the gratitude.

Know, my dear Vanina, that I do not like blood. Besides, I am still young, although I seem old to you, and I can still live in a time when the blood shed now will become a stain later.

Two o'clock struck when Bishop Catanza led Vanina to the small door of his garden.

The next day, when the minister came to the pope, very embarrassed by what he had to do, His Holiness said to him:

First of all, I have a favor to ask of you. There is one of the Forli Carbonari who is sentenced to death; This thought prevents me from sleeping: I need to save this man.

The minister, seeing that the pope was on his side, made several objections and ended up writing a decree or motu proprio, which the pope, contrary to custom, signed.

Vanina thought that if she managed to get her lover’s forgiveness, he would be poisoned. Even the day before, Misirilli received from Abbot Kari, his confessor, several bags of sea biscuits and advice not to touch government food.

Vanina, having learned that the Forli Carbonari again wanted to be transferred to the castle of San Leo, wanted to try to see Misirilli as he passed through Cita Castellana and arrived in this city a day before the prisoners; she found Abbot Cari there, several days ahead of her. He obtained from the guard that Misirilli was allowed to listen to mass at midnight in the prison church. This was not enough: they were promised that if Misirilli agreed to allow his hands and feet to be tied with a chain, then the watchman would go to the door of the chapel so that he could only see the criminal for whom he was responsible, but not be able to hear what he would say.

The day on which Vanina’s fate was to be decided has finally arrived. In the morning she locked herself in the prison chapel. Who could tell the thoughts that worried her during this have a long day? Did Misirilli love her enough to forgive her? She reported on his venta, but she saved his life. When reason took over in this tormented soul, she hoped that he would agree to flee with her from Italy. If she sinned, it was from an excess of love. When four o'clock struck, she heard in the distance, on the pavement, the tramp of Carabinieri horses. The noise of every step echoed in her heart. Soon she heard the rumble of prisoners' carts. They stopped in a small square in front of the prison; she saw how two carabinieri raised Misirilli; he was alone in the cart and weighed down to such an extent with iron that he could not move. At least he's alive, she said with tears in her eyes; They haven't poisoned him yet! This evening was terrible; the lamp above the altar, for which the watchman spared oil, hung very high, alone illuminated this dark chapel. Vanina's eyes wandered over the graves of several important dignitaries of the Middle Ages who died in a nearby prison. Their statues looked fierce.

All noise has long since died down. Vanina was immersed in her dark thoughts. Soon after midnight struck, she heard a slight noise, as if from the flight of a bat. She wanted to go and fell almost unconscious onto the bars of the altar. At that very moment, two shadows appeared next to her, although she did not hear their steps. It was the watchman and Misirilli, so covered in chains that he looked as if he had been swaddled.

The watchman opened the lantern and placed it on the grate next to Vanina so that he could clearly see his prisoner. Finally, he retreated into the depths, towards the doors. He barely had time to move away when Vanina threw herself on Misirilli’s neck. Squeezing him in her arms, she felt only his chains, cold and sharp. Who put these chains on him? she thought. It gave her no pleasure to hug her lover. This grief was joined by another, more burning one; It seemed to her that Misirilli knew about her crime, he was so cold.

Dear friend,” he said at last, “I regret your love for me; in vain I try to explain to myself how you could like me. Believe me, let’s return to more Christian feelings, let’s forget our previous errors; I can't belong to you. The constant misfortune that haunted all my undertakings stems, perhaps, from the mortal sin in which I was constantly found. Even if we had only listened to the advice of human prudence, then why was I not arrested with my friends on that fateful night in Forlì? Why was I not at my post at the moment of danger? Why could my absence give rise to the most terrible suspicions? I had another passion besides the freedom of Italy.

Vanina could not recover from surprise, seeing such a change in Misirilli. Although he had not lost much weight, he looked at least thirty years old. Vanina attributed this change to her mistreatment in prison and burst into tears.

ABOUT! - she said, “the watchmen promised me to treat you well.”

The fact is that with the approach of death, all religious principles that could be consistent with the passion for the liberation of Italy were again resurrected in the heart of the young Carbonari. Little by little Vanina saw that the amazing change she noticed in her lover was purely moral, and not at all a consequence of bad treatment. Her grief, which seemed excessive to her, became even greater. Misirilli was silent, Vanina seemed ready to choke from sobs. He added in a somewhat agitated voice:

If I loved anyone on earth, it was you, Vanina; but, thanks to God, I have one goal in life: I will die either in prison or trying to liberate Italy.

More silence followed; obviously Vanina could not speak; She tried in vain to force herself to say something.

Misirilli added:

Duty is cruel, my friend, but if it were not difficult to fulfill it, then what would heroism consist of? Give me your word that you will not try to see me.

As far as the chain allowed him, he made a small movement with his hand and extended his fingers to Vanina.

If you allow a person who was dear to you to give you advice, marry a worthy man chosen for you by your father. Do not make any unpleasant confession to him, but, on the other hand, never try to see me; From now on we will be strangers to each other. You gave a significant amount for the liberation of your homeland; if she ever frees herself from her tyrants, she will return everything in full to you from the national property.

Vanina was depressed. Speaking to her, Pietro’s eyes lit up only at the word homeland.

Finally, pride came to her aid; she stocked up on diamonds and small tiles of gold. Without answering Misirilli, she offered them to him.

“I accept out of obligation,” he said, “because I must try to escape; but I will never see you again, I swear by your new good deeds. Goodbye, Vanina; promise me never to write, never to try to see me; leave me alone to my homeland, I died for you; Farewell.

No,” objected the angry Vanina, “I want you to know what I did, guided by love for you.”

Then she told him all her actions from the moment Misirilli left the castle of San Nicolò to surrender himself into the hands of the legate. Having finished this story, Vanina added:

All this means nothing: I did even more out of love for you.

Then she told him about her betrayal.

Ah, a monster! - cried the enraged Pietro, rushing at her and trying to kill her with his chains.

He would have succeeded if the watchman had not come running at the first screams. He grabbed Misirilli.

“Here you are, monster, I don’t want to owe you anything,” Misirilli said to Vanina, throwing her as many jewels as the chains allowed; and he hastily left.

Vanina was completely destroyed. She returned to Rome: and the newspapers announced her marriage to Prince Don Livio Savelli.

Stendhal - Vanina Vanini, read the text

"Vanina Vanini"

Stendhal's short story "Vanina Vanini", published in 1829, was dedicated to modern Italy, about which the author had already written several books. In this work, the writer recreated the heated everyday life of the country, which in one way or another touched the heart of everyone. “Vanina Vanini” spoke directly about the Italian carbonari, whose activities at that time continued to develop, despite the persecution of not so much the Italian as the Austrian police.

The story of the Roman princess Vanini and the Carbonari Pietro Missirilli is presented as a very recent event: “Vanina Vanini, or Some Details Concerning the Last Carbonari Venta Revealed in the Papal States.” The year was not specified very precisely: the action began on a spring evening in the 1820s. One might think that the event happened quite recently, perhaps in the same 1829, when the story about it was published.

In an exposition that occupies only two pages, the author managed to characterize the political situation, the environment to which Vanina belongs, as well as the event that became the prerequisite for the beginning of the drama (Missirilli’s romantic escape from the prison castle). Here psychological motivation for the further development of the action was also given.

Vanina is a typical Stendhal character of a romantic noble girl who despises elegant but empty young aristocrats and is able to recognize an intelligent, energetic, funny man from the people as worthy of her respect and love.

Carbonari Missirilli, a poor man, the son of a provincial surgeon, and Vanina, distinguished by her intelligence, independence of judgment, amazing beauty and high position in society, fell in love with each other.

However, their love had no future. The young Carbonari represented that new, young Italy, the features of which Stendhal sought to capture in Italian society. Personal happiness for such a hero turns out to be impossible, because the struggle for the freedom of the homeland requires the whole person.

Vanina admired Missirilli’s strength, way of thinking, courage, and his ability to take decisive action. But for the headstrong beauty, the meaning and highest value of life is love. She is indifferent to the fate of her homeland. Vanini are completely alien high ideals the young man she fell in love with. At the same time, both are natures who obey the impulse of feelings, fearlessly achieve their goals, and are not prone to long doubts. Therefore, the reckless passion of these two young people, who understood the meaning of life so differently, flared up in the midst of danger, was initially doomed to a fatal outcome.

The heroes of the story are inseparable from their time. Their personal tragedy was not born of the historical situation in which their characters were formed. Individual conflict is caused by the intensity of political struggle. The undeniable reality of what is happening is emphasized by the general tone of Stendhal's prose - businesslike - dry, outwardly dispassionate. The materials that inspired the writer and helped him create the work were provided by the very life of Italian society in the first third of the 19th century.

The action of the novella begins in Rome, during a ball given by a famous banker in his new palazzo on Venetian Square. This one of the richest bankers in Italy, by the name of Torlonia, bought from the papal government the title of Duke of Bracciano and a luxurious palace built in the 15th century and once owned by Prince Orsini, one of the rulers of Rome.

Stendhal indicates the scene of the action, and the reader accurately imagines the Roman landscape with palaces, with abbots, bishops, prelates and absolute papal power. The Carbonari Venta (organization) was discovered later in the city of Forme, in the Papal States. It can be assumed that we are talking about events that took place in real life and became one way or another known to Stendhal.

However, the activities of the Carbonara Ventas were strictly clandestine; any message about what was said in secret society and where it was assembled was considered treason, since the result could be the death of dozens or hundreds of conspirators. The Italian and Austrian police also kept everything that happened secret. Rumors about what happened were unreliable and during transmission were distorted beyond recognition. Some sources can only be found in Stendhal himself - in his diaries, notes and books, reflecting random details of what happened or inventions passed from mouth to mouth in various interpretations.

In 1817, in the book “Rome, Naples and Florence,” Stendhal spoke about the “sweetness of life” in Venice from 1740 to 1790. He continued the legend of “Happy Venice”, created by numerous travelers and the few Venetian rich people of that time. The writer took anecdotes about freedom of morals and scandalous behavior of Venetian beauties as evidence of this sweet life.

Stendhal gives one of these anecdotes in his work. It talks about the attempt of a certain noble lady, during a love meeting with the patriarch, to save her other lover, who was unjustly sentenced to death.

Nine years later, in a new edition of the book, the author told the same anecdote in a different version. In the margins of one copy of his work, Stendhal wrote down the full name of the lady in question. This was Countess Marina Querini Benzoni (1757 - 1839), a blue-eyed Venetian, not very beautiful, but very attractive, which Stendhal noted, and had very free morals. She even became the heroine of a poem, widely known in her time. Benzoni was close to Byron. Thomas Moore, Byron's friend and future biographer, and many other foreigners also knew her.

In the second version of this anecdote, dated 1826, Stendhal no longer focused his attention on the lady’s meeting with the patriarch, but on her subsequent explanation with her lover. But its basis remains the same: a frivolous lady saves her lover.

Whether this anecdote was just one of the gossip that was freely told in the salons and boxes of Italian theaters, or a historical fact recorded in the documents of the era, Stendhal accepted it as a real historical event, true for the time when he himself was in Venice. Three years after Stendhal told new version in the second edition of his book, he began to write a story on a plot close to the story of Benzoni. Stendhal considered her lover, sentenced to death, to be a Carbonari - the Carbonari attracted everyone's attention.

So in his new work the action takes place in Rome, where morals at that time were stricter. A Venetian criminal becomes a carbonari and the lover of no longer an immoral countess, but a Roman princess. The patriarch, who carried out such affairs in Venice, became the Roman governor, minister of police and, as was customary in the papal state, prelate. She came to him secretly in Vanin’s office to ask for the arrested Pietro.

The closeness of the plot scheme of Stendhal's novella to Benzoni's story is obvious. The story of the Roman princess obviously arose in connection with the story of the Venetian Countess Benzoni, because work on the novella began a little over a year after the publication of the second version.

It is difficult to understand whether Stendhal himself was aware of this connection while working on the novella. But in his imagination, the tone of the funny Venetian story, the character and fate of the characters took on a completely different meaning. Stendhal rebuilt the history of these events and resolved many different issues.

The echo of the era is felt not only in the plot outline, but also in many other details. For example, in order to save his friend, Vanina scares the Minister of Police with the revenge of the Carbonari: “If he (Missirilli) is executed, you will not survive him even for one week.”

Indeed, such cases did happen, and Stendhal told one of them in his work “Walks in Rome,” where the Carbonari were often mentioned. Judge Besini, who faithfully served his ruler, boasted that, despite the insufficient evidence, he achieved the death penalty for the Carbonari the very next day after their arrest. That same night he was killed. And his son Giulio Besini, the Minister of Police, who also brutally persecuted the Carbonari, was soon killed right on the street. The guards who constantly accompanied him did not save the minister. Obviously, Stendhal remembered this incident. He remembered their murder, or “execution,” as the Carbonari said, in the “Parma Monastery.”

The history of the Parthenopean Republic of 1799 was also reflected in Stendhal’s novella. The writer talked about the bloody events of 1799 - 1800 in the book “Rome, Naples and Florence.” There, in custody, he reported on the execution of one of the victims of the White Terror. This was a woman named Maria Luigia Fortunata Sanfelice. Information about her was contradictory and unreliable. Contemporaries, and after them the historian of the Neapolitan revolution, interpreted the role of Sanfelice in different ways, but in most cases with complete sympathy.

In his imagination, Stendhal created a heroine from this woman, in love with a short man social status, republican and revolutionary. He came up with some details that made a strong impression on readers: when the officer left Sanfelice to go to his post, she threw herself at his feet, begging him to stay with her. The loved one said words that are missing from all the documents: “If there is any danger, I should be with my friends all the more.” In the commentary that follows, Stendhal notes the high moral spirit and clarity of this Neapolitan philosophy.

Stendhal, who knew Italy very well at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 19th centuries, was deeply interested in the tragic events of the Neapolitan revolution, the psychology of Sanfelice and her lover, the political and moral problem, which they had to solve under particularly difficult conditions. Having conceived his novella, he transferred the action to Rome, which was better familiar to him with its Trasteverines, beggars and princes and seemed more attractive and energetic. He turned the weak-willed Sanfelice into an extremely energetic Vanina, but also indifferent to politics and social life, like Sanfelice. Vanina's accidental union with the Carbonari, as well as Sanfelice's union with an officer of the Republican troops, did not change their attitude to politics - both only wanted to save the person they loved.

Having also retained some of the main plot lines of the Sanfelice story, Stendhal filled his short story with other moral and psychological content of the events associated with Sanfelice, which will also be heard in the novel “The Monastery of Parma.”

In the history of Sanfelice, Stendhal saw a number of problems of great historical and social significance. He understood Vanina Vanini, the Roman princess, and Pietro Missirilli, the son of a poor doctor, as people typical not only of modern Italy, but also of Europe in general. Each of them reflected the thought that was active in the post-revolutionary era in completely different ways.

The history of Europe since 1789 has been filled with turbulent events and the struggle for the reconstruction of society. And this struggle was felt in one way or another in all countries, in all layers of society. Princess Vanina was indifferent to what was happening. However, modern reality, with its worries and anxieties, the struggle of opinions, with the secret activities of the Carbonari, conspiring, sitting in prisons, awaiting execution, still invaded her consciousness. The circle in which she moved, the balls where she was a recognized beauty queen, the counts, princes and dukes who sought her hand - everything seemed too insignificant to her. She was unbearably bored in the midst of the splendor surrounding her. Vanina was also irritated by her fiancé, the narrow-minded and narrow-minded Roman prince Don Livno Savelli.

At the next ball, where the princess, as always, shone, she heard the news about the escape of the carbonari, who was seriously injured during a strike with the guards. This news shocked not only Vanina, but also many others.

“While everyone was talking about this escape, Don Lavio Savelli, delighted with Vanina’s charm and success, almost mad with love, exclaimed, escorting her to the chair after the dance:

But tell me, for God's sake, who could you like?

A young carbonari who fled from the fortress today. At least he did something, and didn’t just give himself the trouble to be born.”

In the girl’s words addressed to her fiancé, one can hear obvious contempt for the people around her, brilliant, titled, nonentities, with their petty intrigues, gossip, incapable of decisive action.

After the ball, Vanina accidentally noticed a mysterious stranger on the top floor of her mansion. The wounded woman was hidden there by her father. “She felt deep pity and sympathy for such a young, so unhappy woman and tried to unravel her story.”

The stranger obviously had powerful enemies, from whom she took refuge in the princely mansion. Vanina did not even think that the reason for their guests’ misfortune could be ordinary. The princess finally found what she was looking for, what her soul was striving for - something extraordinary, dangerous and heroic, which had never happened in her palazizzo or with her acquaintances. This is how the peculiarity of the era manifested itself - a longing for the new, which everyone expected, some with fear, some with hope.

When the unexpected deception was revealed, and the stranger turned out to be a man and, in addition, a Carbonari, friendly sympathy grew into obvious passion. Before Vanina was a hero who risked his life, wounded in an unequal battle with armed guards. Vanina, who was not interested in anything, was always limited only by herself - hence her individualism, her contempt for everything in the world, her pride and, finally, her tragedy. She was afraid that, having learned about her love, the young Carbonari would laugh at her or be proud of his victory. Her upbringing, the conventions accepted in society, and social inequality erected artificial barriers between young people. But their strong feeling destroyed all barriers. And Vanina completely surrenders to her love. However, Missirilli, who also loves her passionately, refuses to marry her. Carbonari has no right to a life of rays; he must remain faithful to his homeland.

“Pietro threw himself at her feet. Vanina was beaming with joy.

“I love you passionately,” he said, “but I am a poor man and I am a servant of my homeland.” The more unhappy Italy is, the more I must remain faithful to it.”

In this case, love turned out to be stronger than Vanina’s wounded pride. Comparing her hero with the great ancient Romans, she again rushes into his arms.

“If he has to choose between me and his homeland,” she thought, “he will give preference to me.”

However, after painful thoughts, after a meeting with his comrades who elected him as the new head of their Venta, Pietro moves away from Vanina. Missirilli was again caught up in the struggle, and together with other rebels he was preparing conspiracies. But Pietro, tossing between love for a woman and love for his long-suffering homeland, makes a fatal mistake. Completely trusting his beloved, he recklessly shares with her his thoughts and even secret information and plans of struggle.

And Vanina, for whom this incomprehensible “homeland” prevented her from being happy, taking her lover away from her, commits betrayal. The woman reports information to the authorities about the Venta led by Missirilli, without, of course, mentioning his name in the denunciation. Such an act does not seem to her a crime, because thanks to this Vanina hoped to forever unite with her loved one. But by betraying his friends, she also doomed Pietro Missarilli to death. The young man, left alone at large, surrendered himself to the authorities, not wanting to look like a coward and a traitor in the eyes of his comrades. Vanina’s plans, unable to take into account the feelings and thoughts of other people, collapsed overnight.

Of course, she was painfully aware of her mistake, but these were not remorse - she suffered because she had lost her “little village doctor” - “hero”.

In the prison fortress, during Vanina’s last meeting with Missirilli, a now insurmountable barrier again arose between them: Missirilli asked Vanina to consider them strangers to each other. The princess was shocked: she noticed that her friend’s eyes flashed only once during the entire conversation - when he said the word “homeland”. Without answering, she gave him diamonds and saws so that he could escape.

Forced to accept them to continue the struggle for the liberation of his homeland, Missirilli still asked to be forgotten forever.

“Give your word never to write to me, never to seek a date with me. From now on I belong entirely to my homeland. I died for you."

Hearing this, Vanina flew into a rage, not from love, but from offended joy. She, the best beauty of Rome from a princely family, is abandoned for the sake of some homeland! And not out of love for him, but to prove that she is better than her homeland, that her homeland is nothing in comparison with her, Vanina tells how she gave it to her. So, after an outburst of rage and pride, her love ended. Soon the newspapers reported that she had married Prince Livio Savelli. With this marriage, obviously, she wanted to justify herself in her own opinion.Despite her reckless hobby, Vanina remains a person from another world, alien and hostile to Missirilli. Love for him is just an extraordinary, romantic and tragic episode in the monotonous, hothouse existence of a noble girl, like an eternal festival.

The character of Missirilli is marked by tragedy. With heroic honesty and directness, he pronounces a harsh sentence on himself: he betrayed his duty by giving his heart to a woman, belonging to his homeland; that's why the uprising failed. “The demands of duty are cruel, my friend, he says simply, sincerely, without the slightest pretense, but if they could be fulfilled easily, what would heroism consist of?” .

Stendhal always sympathized with the Carbonari, like everyone who fought against the old regime, although, as is known, he considered their tactics futile. Moreover, he sympathized with the young noble people imprisoned in the fortress for revolutionary actions, which seemed to him madness.

Missirilli's figure is quite truthful, although his touching heroism today seems a little naive and therefore sometimes makes one smile. He was one of these people of the future who wanted to create a new Italy and at the same time a new Europe. Carbonarism could not achieve what it sought, but it aroused fear in reactionary circles and admiration among liberal-minded people. The Carbonari created a modern revolutionary ideology and prepared the future, probably not so much with conspiracies, but with their personal courage and deep faith in the revival of their country.

The secret organization did not allow its members to communicate with the uninitiated, even with members of another Venta, and only senior managers were aware of the existence and composition of each. This led to loneliness and taught secrecy and personal solutions to great moral problems.

Missirilli faced such a problem, and it was difficult to solve only in philosophical terms.

His thoughts about his homeland correspond to the views characteristic of the rationalism of the 17th century.

“What is homeland? - he asked himself. - After all, this is not some living creature to whom we are obliged to be grateful for good deeds and who will become unhappy and curse us if we betray him. No, homeland and freedom are like my cloak: useful clothes that I must buy, unless I inherited them from my father. In essence, I love my homeland and freedom because they are useful to me. And if I don’t need them, if they are like a warm raincoat for me in the summer heat, why should I buy them, and at such an expensive price? Vanina is so good and so extraordinary! they will look after her, she will forget me, and I will lose her forever.”

It would seem that, following this reasoning, Missirilli should have stayed with the woman he loved, since he did not receive any benefit by choosing his homeland. But despite the struggle taking place in his soul, he preferred his homeland to everything in the world, contrary to Vanina’s expectations.

Obviously, a very simple and very painful process took place in Missirilli’s mind: the homeland, an abstract concept with which he had recently operated in his reasoning, turned into living people who died at the hands of his beloved, that is, at his own hand. He could not bear this and, sacrificing himself, Pietro rushes to kill the one who most recently was the “soul of his life.” In his position it was tantamount to suicide. But he could not do otherwise. Vanina, having betrayed his comrades, betrayed him too. Instant insight - without abstract concepts, without psychological searches and philosophical reflections- revealed the tenacity and depth of his convictions.

So real historical events, which formed the basis of the plot of this work, Stendhal filled with other moral and psychological content. Modern Italian reality, with its excitement and anxieties, the activities of conspirators, invaded the pages of the novel. The tragedy of her heroes was a consequence of the tense political situation in the country, which destroyed their love. The writer created a generalized poetic character of a participant in a secret revolutionary society, courageous, unbending, confident that he had chosen the right path. The heroic lifestyle of Pietro Missirilli is depicted as the fearless consistency of an honest man, a true patriot, for whom the liberation of his homeland became his only goal.

The selfish Princess Vanina, thinking only of herself, was unable to overcome the shackles of her class and stand on a par with Missirilli. Love for him, in fact, turned out to be just an extraordinary, romantic and tragic episode in the monotonous, hothouse existence of a noble girl, like an eternal festival. And, despite their deep and passionate love, the young people remained alien to each other.

"Vanina Vanini": analysis of the short story, main characters.

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