STENDHAL (1783-1842).

L.A., Smolensk, 80 leagues from Moscow, August 24, 1812, [to his friend Félix FAURE]; 2 pages in-4. Superb letter from the Russian Campaign. He first evokes the happiness of his friend, whom he envies. "How the man changes! This thirst for seeing that I used to have, is completely extinguished since I saw Milan and Italy. Everything I see repels me with its coarseness. Would you believe that without anything that touches me more than another, without anything personal, I am sometimes on the point of shedding tears. In this ocean of barbarism not a sound that responds to my soul. Everything is coarse, dirty, stinking in the physical and moral sense. I have only had a little pleasure in having music made for me on a small discord piano, by a being who smells of music as I do of Mass. Ambition no longer has any effect on me; the most beautiful cord would not seem to me to be a compensation for the mud in which I am sunk. I imagine the heights that my soul (composing works, hearing Cimarosa and loving Angela under a beautiful climate) that my soul inhabits, like delicious hills far from those hills in the plain, under fetid swamps, I am plunged there and nothing in the world that the sight of a geographical map reminds me of my hills "... He even takes great pleasure in doing official business related to Italy; three or four have occupied his imagination like a novel. ..." I have a vexation of details. I crossed the country from Wilna to Boyardowiscoma (near Krasnoi) where I joined when that country was not organized. I had extreme phisical pains. To get there I left my car behind and this car does not join. It is possible that it has been looted. For me personally it would only be half a misfortune, about 4000f of lost effects and inconvenience, but I was carrying effects for everyone. What a silly compliment to pay people. This, however, does not affect the way of being that I have explained to you. I am getting older. It depends on me to be more active than any of the people who are in the Bau where I write, with their ears besieged by platitudes [...] All this tends furiously to make me ask for the sub-pref. of Rome. I would not hesitate if I were sure of dying at 40. This is an attack on Belism. It is a consequence of the execrable moral education we have received. We are orange trees that came by the force of their sprouting in the middle of a pond of ice in Iceland"... He urges his friend to write to him, to embrace Angela for him and to help him. He talks about Paris: "I don't like Paris any more than I do in Paris, I'm blasé about this city as I think you are, but I like the sensations that Painting and opera Buffa have given me there for six months"... He speaks of novelties "like the dramatic art of Schlegel (Mme de Staël's friend)"... Correspondance générale, t. II, n° 818 (p. 352).