Red and Black is the foundation work of European critical realism in19th century. Focusing on the hero's personal struggle experience and ultimate failure, especially the description of his two love affairs, the novel widely shows the heavy social atmosphere brought by successive governments to the French people in the first 30 years of the19th century, and strongly criticizes the reaction of the nobles, the darkness of the church and the meanness and vulgarity of the bourgeois nouveau riche during the Restoration Dynasty. Therefore, although the novel is centered on Lian's love life, it is not a love novel after all, but a political novel.
Stendhal is a literary master who is good at reflecting major social problems from love. Julien's two loves are closely related to the times, which is a manifestation of class competition at that time. He did have real feelings for Mrs Delaunay later, but at first it was out of the revenge of ordinary citizens on the powerful. Therefore, when Lian first took possession of Madame Delaunay's hand, he felt not the happiness of love, but the victory of Napoleon's ambition, the joy of carnival and the satisfaction of revenge.
If even the pursuit of Madame Delaunay has some sincere feelings, then even the love for Miss Mathilde is purely political competition. Mathilde has both the arrogance and willfulness of a noble girl and the profound influence of France. She believes that if there is another *, it must be a youthful civilian youth like Lian leading the society. Marrying Lianlian was full of romance and found a strong backer. However, Julien thinks that marrying Miss Mathilde can reach the top and rise to the top, so she does not hesitate to cheat her love. However, Julian's two love affairs failed in the end. This is because during the restoration period, the feudal forces made a crazy counterattack against the citizens. Lian is not a member of the ruling class, and that class will never tolerate people like Lian to realize their ambitions.
"Red and Black" has made outstanding achievements in the modeling of typical characters in typical environments, the symmetrical artistic structure and the use of line drawing techniques, while Stendhal is called the father of modern novels by critics because of his outstanding psychological description genius in "Red and Black". Realist writers emphasize the truth of details, but unlike Balzac, Stendhal pays attention to describing not the objective environment, but the meticulous and realistic inner activities of the characters. The author often explains the actions of the characters and the surrounding environment in a few words, and at the same time describes their inner activities magnificently, regardless of pen and ink, and the psychological description of love is even more subtle and moving. It took only three pages for the author to learn that Madame Delaunay had written a disclosure letter and shot her, while the love with Mathilde took hundreds of pages to describe in detail. Mrs Delaunay's complex psychological display of joy, pain, repentance and unwillingness to give up happiness in love is also amazing.
Reading red and black is a long process, because time has given writers and works the most selfless and fair evaluation. My reading attitude cannot be as unscrupulous as a best seller, nor can I be as noncommittal as a romance novel. I am talking to that era with my heart, and the focus is also on exploration and thinking outside history.
What led me to finish the book was its great charm. The author shows the broad social picture of that era from a simple criminal case data, and raises an ordinary criminal offence to the level of historical and philosophical research on the French bourgeois social system at the beginning of the19th century. The novel let me see something that I can't feel in the blunt history books, the critical period when French big noble and the bourgeoisie were in power alternately. From it, I learned another artistic feature of realistic works: Stendhal's dialectics of human soul; This is quite different from the personal situation of Balzac that I learned from the old man Gao and Eugenie Grandet.
The most dazzling and literary figure in the book is naturally Lian sorrell, a commoner with higher education, a governess, who had an affair with his mistress, exposed an affair, shot his lover and was sentenced to death. This is the skeleton of his life. His passion and persistence in pursuing happiness, and his almost heroic spirit of resisting class differences are touching flesh and blood. The author downplays the material description and highlights the spiritual pursuit, which strengthens the dream experience of Lian Chu's pursuit of heroes under the impulse of youth, is a resistance to that social form, and is also a resistance to mediocrity and wasted youth.
When social reality hinders the realization of ambition, there are only two choices: retreat or resist. Those young people who don't make progress in front of small staff and complain about boring life all day are all people who give up halfway. They may be mediocre and comfortable, but they are eliminated by social progress. It is a rebel with the same spirit as Lian who can constantly set life goals and decide to realize life ideals. This era certainly does not welcome hypocritical words and deeds as a means, but it still needs enthusiasm for life to resist the emptiness of life. From this point of view, Lian's tragic ending has more practical significance to today's society besides showing that individual resistance is not feasible.
At this point, I have to lead to a pioneering work of this novel, which makes the love between Julien and Madame Delaunay and the love between Julien and Miss Delamotte set each other off. Although the love styles of the two aristocratic women are very different, one is deep and the other is fanatical, but they are consistent in these two basic points, that is, disgust for their own class and rebellion against the feudal gate system. I remember when Lian found that his love was becoming a tool of vanity, he said that I ruined myself, but the next detail was that a malicious expression between arrogance quickly replaced the most sincere and intense expression of love. At this time, your wife got rid of the life that has been crawling like a tortoise and won love by losing her dignity. The progress of the two tragic love stories in the book is always accompanied by the indifference of the nouveau riche and the suspicion brought by the inferiority complex. It is not until the end of life that love gives birth to a useless primitive spark, which makes people feel grateful.
When I was ready to put pen to paper, I found that the time to write my feelings with consciousness can be compared with the time to read the original work with spirit. What excites me is that I am inspired and moved by those love fragments that are still heroic despite distortion. When someone mentions Red and Black, I can proudly add a sentence after reading it.
Chapter II Red and Black Reading Notes
Stendhal's Red and Black tells the story of French youth Julien. Lian is a talented, ambitious, self-respecting and serious person. Many comments describe Lian as an ambitious man who climbs blindly. But personally, I think they have overlooked one thing, that is, Lian's conscience. Or ignore the author's spiritual thinking behind the story.
Julian is really an ambitious man. The process of Julien's ambition expansion is the most superficial and direct clue of the story. In Germany. Renard has a holiday, Julian thought, I must succeed in this woman, so that if one day I make a fortune and someone accuses me of catching up with the inferior profession of being a governess, I can tell him that love has thrown me into this situation. But Julian is also like a philosopher. He thinks about life and Paris. What haunts him is to be a hero like Napoleon. But he is interested in Germany. Mrs. renard's love, especially at the end of his life, cannot but make people feel real. The author's story is very ingenious. Lian is trying his best to acquire virtue while embarking on his official career. Lai Na's heart, and want to use it to prove his ability and improve his value, but in the end he still doesn't understand German. Mrs renard is the love of his life. Later, Miss Mathilde took the initiative to pursue Lian from the beginning. But after repeated times, Julian was fascinated. When Mathilde confirmed that she was in love with Julien, Julien said only Germany before she died. Mrs renard will treat her children sincerely. The reason is that even the climbing process needs the help of these women, but in the end he fell down because of women. In Red and Black, the author created Julien, but he also created the era behind Julien. In the upper class, everyone values honor, but lives a luxurious and decadent life. Young people lack courage. All kinds of parties in society are actively and secretly active.
On the means of characterization, Stendhal used the psychological depth that contemporary writers can't reach. It fully shows the hero's spiritual space with a profound and delicate style, and widely uses monologues, free associations and other artistic techniques to explore the activities of deep consciousness, creating a precedent for later stream-of-consciousness novels and psychological novels. It is the philosophy and poetry of the soul.
People have also caused some controversy about the title of this book. Usually, people think that the red in the title is a military uniform symbolizing the Napoleonic era; Black is the black dress of monks in the restoration period. Some people think that red is Mrs. Derine's blood and black is martel's funeral; Red and black are symbols of black spots and red spots on the gambling table, while roulette symbolizes the game of life. I think red can also symbolize Lian's pursuit of the meaning of life, while black represents all kinds of people in society who struggle for their own interests but don't know their real existence!
Chapter III Red and Black Reading Notes
Red and Black is the foundation work of European critical realism in19th century. Focusing on the hero's personal struggle experience and ultimate failure, especially the description of his two love affairs, the novel widely shows the heavy social atmosphere brought by successive governments to the French people in the first 30 years of the19th century, and strongly criticizes the reaction of the nobles, the darkness of the church and the meanness and vulgarity of the bourgeois nouveau riche during the Restoration Dynasty. Therefore, although the novel focuses on love life, it is not a love novel after all, but a political novel.
Stendhal is a literary master who is good at reflecting major social problems from love. Julien's two loves are closely related to the times, which is a manifestation of class competition at that time. He did have real feelings for Mrs Delaunay later, but at first it was out of the revenge of ordinary citizens on the powerful. Therefore, when Lian first took possession of Madame Delaunay's hand, he felt not the happiness of love, but the victory of Napoleon's ambition, the joy of carnival and the satisfaction of revenge.
If even the pursuit of Madame Delaunay has some sincere feelings, then even the love for Miss Mathilde is purely political competition. Mathilde has both the arrogant and willful temperament of a noble girl and the profound influence of France. She believes that if there is another *, it must be a youthful civilian youth like Lian leading the society. Marrying Lianlian was full of romance and found a strong backer. However, Julien thinks that marrying Miss Mathilde can reach the top and rise to the top, so she does not hesitate to cheat her love. However, Julian's two love affairs failed in the end. This is because during the restoration period, the feudal forces made a crazy counterattack against the citizens. Lian is not a member of the ruling class, and that class will never tolerate people like Lian to realize their ambitions.
"Red and Black" has made outstanding achievements in the modeling of typical characters in typical environments, the symmetrical artistic structure and the use of line drawing techniques, while Stendhal is called the father of modern novels by critics because of his outstanding psychological description genius in "Red and Black". Realistic writers all emphasize the truth of details, but unlike Balzac, Stendhal pays attention to describing not the objective environment, but the meticulous and realistic inner activities of the characters. Authors often explain characters' actions and surroundings in a few words, and at the same time describe their inner activities eloquently and movingly. It took only three pages for the author to learn that Madame Delaunay had written a disclosure letter and shot her, while the love with Mathilde took hundreds of pages to describe in detail. When Mrs. Delaunay was in love, the complex psychological display of joy, pain, repentance and unwillingness to give up happiness was also amazing.
Reading red and black is a long process, because time has given writers and works the most selfless and fair evaluation. My reading attitude cannot be as unscrupulous as a best seller, nor can I be as noncommittal as a romance novel. I am talking to that era with my heart, and the focus is also on exploration and thinking outside history.