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Rating: 
Summary: The 'Cold Philosopher' Analyses Reproductive Behavior
Review: Although sex, love, and reproduction can be differentially manifest they derive from a common causal nexus. By examining the behavior of love Stendhal indirectly addresses the conscious mode of sex and reproduction. Unlike the pagan attitudes toward love of many before him and as observed in modern times, Stendhal's love is well dressed, well mannered, honest, quixotic, honorable, and implausible,...yet witty, saucy, importunate, irrational, and realistically disastrous; quixotic I think being the rubric term. Indeed, the book reads like a serially condensed version of Cervantes' encounters between the true hearted lads and lasses of 'Don Quixote.' Stendhal even goes so far as to recommend Cervantes in Lisio Visconti's list of literature. In this book you will essentially get the following:I). Stendhal's psychology of love, in which the stages of hormone poisoning and its concomitant cognitions are delineated. Within this framework he introduces his neologism 'crystalization;' i. e., as in how a plain twig, when left in a salt mine for some time, is pulled up covered with stunning, perfect crystals: these crystals representing the amplifications and embellishments the lover's mind dresses their object in. Stendhal goes on quite a bit regarding feminine pride, showing blatant respect and reverence for his objects of desire, but lamenting such foibles as false modesty, insipid prosaism, and vanity love. II). This section reads like a cultural travelogue of love for western Europe from the early 19th century. Here love is a ruse used to chronicle what he sees as regional stereotypes of behavior. His self-deprecating dislike of all things French and antipodal regard for all things Italian pervades his cross-cultural mind set. As a Frenchman Stendhal only accepts the 12th century chivalry of Provence. This section of the book also evidences his strong advocacy of women's rights (although he does recommend life imprisonment for adulterous wives), and his excellent psychological juxtapose of Don Juan and Werther. III). The fragments are probably the weakest part of the book but they add texture and pace. As the introduction by Stewart and Knight suggest, the fragments are an attempt to weave objective credibility into Stendhal's otherwise lugubrious pining over Mathilde Viscontini Dembowski. IV). The appendixes are an interesting anecdotage containing chaplain Andre's 31 articles of love from the 12th century French court, and further elucidation of crystallization and it's advent in the salt mines of Salzburg. Here the book ends with two engaging tales, the near pedophilic chivalry of Philippe Astezan, and the vanity love of Felicie Feline. Overall, Stendhal is lugubriously Quixotic, wittily irreligious, and insouciantly saucy. He captures a mixture of Laclos' intrigues, Plato's daemon of the Phaedrus, and Montaigne's candor. A dated but highly original work.
Rating:
Summary: The first 'Pale Fire'.
Review: There are some readers, the editors of this volume for instance, who would like to reduce this astonishing book to an expression of Stendhal's love for an untouchable woman. Anyone willing to look a little beyond armchair psychology will find a work that is possibly the first 'Pale Fire'. On the surface the work is a philosophical and scientific discourse on the nature of love, and as such it has so much truth and insight that I urge you to give it to your loved one so that he/she might understand you a little better. But this treatise is a translation from the inchoate notes left by an Italian suicide, Lisio Visconti. It is full of anecdotes, stories, digressions, contradictions, repetitions, ellipses, declamations. The writer's objectivity, Kinbote-like, is continually undermined by his obvious madness, his reminiscences of a failed love affair, and that of a friend, Salviati, who may also be Visconti. This textual instability is a constant, playful joy, and perfectly mirrors the difficulties of the book's subject.
Rating:
Summary: The first 'Pale Fire'.
Review: There are some readers, the editors of this volume for instance, who would like to reduce this astonishing book to an expression of Stendhal's love for an untouchable woman. Anyone willing to look a little beyond armchair psychology will find a work that is possibly the first 'Pale Fire'. On the surface the work is a philosophical and scientific discourse on the nature of love, and as such it has so much truth and insight that I urge you to give it to your loved one so that he/she might understand you a little better. But this treatise is a translation from the inchoate notes left by an Italian suicide, Lisio Visconti. It is full of anecdotes, stories, digressions, contradictions, repetitions, ellipses, declamations. The writer's objectivity, Kinbote-like, is continually undermined by his obvious madness, his reminiscences of a failed love affair, and that of a friend, Salviati, who may also be Visconti. This textual instability is a constant, playful joy, and perfectly mirrors the difficulties of the book's subject.
Rating: 
Summary: astute, neither exciting nor boring
Review: This is a Romantic, earlier version of "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus;" it's probably more elegant, but it skips around alot. I'd recommend it; on the whole not terribly clear, still he gets across many valuable ideas. And the ideas aren't all antiquitated, although he certainly can't help you with the "sensitive and noble" minds of women. My edition is actually titled On Love.
Rating: 
Summary: An astounding, eternal classic
Review: This is an incomparable work of beauty, inspiration and genius
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