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joannaautumn 's review for:
The Charterhouse of Parma
by Stendhal
“There's one convenience about absolute power, that it sanctifies everything in the eyes of the people.”
⟶ The Charterhouse of Parma can be seen as a blend of a social novel, a political novel, an adventure novel, a romantic thriller, and yet manages to oppose every single classification. Much like [b:War and Peace|656|War and Peace|Leo Tolstoy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1413215930l/656._SY75_.jpg|4912783] this novel is complex, long, and full of different plot devices; the topic range goes from the Napoleonic wars, the monarchy and court hierarchy along with the petty games of aristocrats, the spiritual leaders, astrologists, to imprisonment, the birth of new aristocracy, simony, etc…
“This man, whom great monarchies would have envied the prince of Parma, was known to have only one passion: of holding intimate conversations with great personages and currying favour by his buffoonery.”
⟶ It is a world of absolutely no order and no justice, where human emotions rule over an entire social group. This is a novel where there is no hero and where the villain is power and selfishness.
It’s a novel of duchess Sanseverina, one of the most striking female characters I have ever read about in pre-20th-century literature work. Strong, carried by a mixture of emotion and principle, intelligent but at the same time selfish, opportunistic and ambitious.
It is a novel about Fabrice/Fabrizio del Dongo, the unlikable main character who has absolutely no ambition and goes wherever his gut takes him, not caring about the consequences. It’s easy to be annoyed by him, but nonetheless, his actions capture the attention of readers, and like a catastrophe unfolding one can’t manage to look away and not care about what happens with this fickle man.
More importantly, it’s a novel of one whole time captured on paper. A world where adaptation, cunningness, and strategy were a must if one would conserve their status in a time on the cusp of change. Fabrice is not a soldier, he most surely isn’t a clerical figure either; Sanseverina isn’t a model figure of female empowerment; The eponymous Charterhouse of Parma isn’t even mentioned until the very last chapter and plays no big role; nothing is completely fixed and solid in this novel and that’s where the complexity lays.
⟶ I have read that the reason why Stendhal is harder to read is because of the rhythm , he never catches the reader’s attention on one specific detail and event rather the entire novel is one big stage where everything is set for the reader to decode and understand the meaning behind it.
That statement is especially true for this novel, needless to say, it’s definitely an atmospheric read worth checking out if one is interested in the finer work of French realism or French literature in general.
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More like 3,75/5, I am going to let this one sink in for a few days and then decide. Review to come.