STENDHAL
5
writer) there is indeed always the recollection of those long, aban–
doned hours-with his Rousseau, his memoirs of Napoleon, and
his caged thrush-in the dank little room on the Place Grenette in
Grenoble. Not less at work are the remembered buffetings of the
temperament that was so formed in its collision with a society that
was to undergo three revolutions in forty years. For a proper
understanding of the man in the white trousers we are compelled,
there£ore, to put his public utterances in their right place, which is
a relative one, and consider them both in relation to the personality
from which they emerge and the society to which they were one
kind of reaction. Perhaps through such an effort the celebrated
enigma of Stendhal will prove less mysterious if not less remark–
able.
The childhood of Stendhal is a Freudian classic even for the
grand siixle
of the Oedipus-complex. "My mother, Madame Hen–
riette Gagnon, was a charming woman, and I was in love with her,"
he announces in
Henri Brulard.
And, lest there be any doubt in
the matter, he continues, "I wanted to cover my mother with kisses,
and for he.r to have no clothes on. She loved me passionately and
often kissed me; I returned her kisses with such ardor that she was
often obliged to go away. I abhorred my father when he came and
interrupted our kisses." But this is perhaps more than enough–
except to note that hatred of the father prevents him from referring
to his mother except by her maiden name. It is demonstrated by
any number of gloating recollections of infantile sadism. When
his tame thrush disappears, for example, he insinuates that his
father has killed it out of spite, and the latter, hurt at the suspicion,
ailudes to it one day in roundabout terms. "I was sublime; I
lushed up to the roots of my hair, but I did not open my lips. He
ressed me for an answer, the same silence met him; but my eyes,
which were very expressive at that age, must have spoken for me."
Thus was he avenged against the "tyrant," and for more than a
onth was proud of his vengeance-a laudable trait, we are told,
·n a child. Here we see, among other things, the beginning of that
talen t for
mptification-a
talent that he shared with his contem–
oraries Poe and Baudelaire-which he was later to put to such a
ariety of uses. And in another quarrel with his father, a hour-
