UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Stendhal's Theater of Authenticity: the Performance of Le Naturel in the Para-Fictional
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Stendhal’s Theater of Authenticity: the Performance of le Naturel in the Para-Fictional Works of Marie-Henri Beyle A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in French & Francophone Studies by Hadley Theadora Suter 2015 © Copyright by Hadley Theadora Suter 2015 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Stendhal’s Theater of Authenticity: the Performance of le Naturel in the Para-Fictional Works of Marie-Henri Beyle by Hadley Theadora Suter Doctor of Philosophy in French & Francophone Studies University of California, Los Angeles, 2015 Professor Laure Murat, Chair Stendhal’s conception of le naturel has long been defined in opposition to the theater: for the narrators and the authentic heroes and heroines of his fiction, there is nothing so vile as the histrionic personality who does not live life so much as perform it. But while most critics have interpreted the theatricality of Stendhal’s fictional characters and that of his own authorial performance as an accidental lapse into the sort of hypocrisy he spends his œuvre simultaneously denouncing, this dissertation argues that his naturalism was not an inadvertent “comédie de sincérité,” as Valéry suggested, but rather a carefully constructed “Theater of Authenticity.” This theater comprises three performances of authenticity: the social, the private, and the written. To each performance corresponds one part of the Stendhalian self, which simultaneously inhabits three roles: actor, spectator, and narrator. Before these performances were staged in his novels and short stories, they were both ii rehearsed and intellectually scrutinized in Stendhal’s para-fictional writings—his “nonfiction,” autobiographies, and private journals. I contend that these genres should be read as an atelier du roman—the literary space in which Stendhal worked out the règles du Je of the authentic self, and how these rules are most authentically transformed into literature. Unearthing this process of intellectualization dispels many Shibboleths of Stendhal’s naturalism as well as of the concept of authenticity itself—namely, that both are predicated on the suspension of rational, analytical faculties in order to liberate the raw passion required to fuel spontaneity and improvisation. While authenticity has been understood to be a problem of modern subjectivity, I argue that it is first and foremost a crisis of literacy: a problem of self-consciousness in the relationship between subject and language, which may be traced back to the invention of the phonetic alphabet in Ancient Greece. This self- consciousness is a narcissism of the word rather than of the image, and the source of Stendhal’s anxiety of authenticity is his fear of indulging in what he famously called “cette effroyable quantité de Je et de Moi.” As such, Stendhal’s para-fiction should also be read as an atelier du romancier, for they provide a narrative to the author’s overcoming of this anxiety: after decoding the rules of authenticity, Beyle himself had to perform them in order to become Stendhal, the novelist. iii The dissertation of Hadley Theadora Suter is approved. Thomas Harrison Malina Stefanovska Laure Murat, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2015 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS AUTHOR’S NOTE ON REFERENCES......................................................................................vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................................................vii VITA....................................................................................................................................................viii INTRODUCTION: Stendhal et le Naturel......................................................................................2 1. The Theater and Authenticity..............................................................................................27 2. Stendhal as Tourist and Critic: the Consumption and Creation of Authenticity........88 3. Not Repetition, But Redundancy: Echo and Tautology in Stendhal’s Autobiographies and Private Journals..............................................................................158 CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................226 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................................239 v AUTHOR’S NOTE ON REFERENCES In keeping with the tradition of Stendhalian studies, I have for the most part cited from the most recent “Bibliothèque de la Pléiade” editions of Stendhal’s writings, and from the Divan collections of his correspondence. The exceptions to this rule are the result of either a lack of availability, or a preference for another edition due to its presentation, editor, and (in the case of unfinished works) the particular manuscript on which it is based. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS With utmost sincerity—“comme Jean-Jacques Rousseau, avec plus de franchise”—I would like to thank my Committee: my advisor, Laure Murat, for her expert guidance, generosity, and for the example of her scholarship and teaching; Malina Stefanovska, who has helped steer the evolution of my scholarly interests with a sharp critical eye and moral support; Patrick Coleman, for his careful readings and his oft-solicited practical advice; Thomas Harrison, whose early suggestions and recommendations proved invaluable to this project. Thanks to the faculty and staff of the UCLA French Department for their help and support throughout my graduate studies. Finally, thanks to the many great French professors who have inspired me over the course of my school years, especially Kirsten Gustavson at The Hamlin School, and Anne Boyman, Serge Gavronsky and Caroline Weber at Barnard. vii VITA Education 2007 B.A., Magna Cum Laude with Distinction in French Barnard College, Columbia University New York, NY 2010 M.A., French & Francophone Studies University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA Employment 2009-2010 Teaching Assistant Department of French & Francophone Studies University of California, Los Angeles 2011 Research Assistant Department of French & Francophone Studies University of California, Los Angeles 2010-2012 Teaching Associate Department of French & Francophone Studies University of California, Los Angeles Publications 2015 “Self as Œuvre/Other: Parisian Fashion Bloggers and the New Culte du Moi,” Paroles Gelées vol. 28. 2015 Book Review: Nelly Wolf’s Proses du monde: Les enjeux sociaux des styles littéraires, Nineteenth-Century French Studies Journal (forthcoming). viii “Ne pouvant être beau, M. de Stendhal s’en vengea en se faisant bizarre.” La Revue de Paris, 4 février 1844 1 INTRODUCTION: STENDHAL ET LE NATUREL In this dissertation, I offer an interpretation of Stendhal’s naturalism as a theater of authenticity. Comprising three performances—the social, the private, and the written—this “theater” functions according to specific rules, whose theorization I trace across Stendhal’s para-fictional writings to suggest that these genres should be read not only as an atelier du roman, but as an atelier du romancier as well. The rules that govern the theater of authenticity, as performed by Stendhal’s fictional characters, are the same that Beyle himself adopted and executed in order to become a novelist. For as long as we have been writing about Stendhal, we have been doing so— deliberately or not—through the lens of le naturel, which inevitably breaks down into a question of sincerity and/or authenticity. This tendency dates back to the peak years of Stendhal’s career. Take, for example, Balzac’s 1840 letter to Stendhal on La Chartreuse de Parme, which classifies mid-nineteenth-century French novelists into two schools of creation: there are those who belong to Littérature des images, and those others (Stendhal included) who in their repudiation of “[les] grandes images” and “[les] vastes spectacles de la nature” belong instead to the school of Littérature à idées, which favors “la concision” and “l’action.”1 Though he does not use the terms themselves, Balzac’s identification of Stendhal’s action- based narrative in opposition to imagery-based lyricism designates sincerity and authenticity as the defining essence of the author’s work at the same time that it reveals what, exactly, these concepts are understood to mean. Sincerity, from sine cera or without wax,2 is predicated on the repudiation of style; authenticity, from the Greek authentês, is a system of valuation 1 Honoré de Balzac, Études sur Stendhal et la Chartreuse de Parme. Suivies de la réponse de Stendhal (Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1997), 24. 2 As noted by Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1971), 114. 2 privileging action.3 Essence over aesthetic; referent over representation; the thing over the portrayal of the thing. This is, in its simplest form, what we mean when we talk about le naturel in the works of Stendhal. Yet this same opposition, articulated as a conflict between being and performing, underwrites Valéry’s famous dismissal of Stendhal’s preoccupation with le naturel as inauthentic, his sincerity as an insincere “comédie de sincérité” in which Stendhal “plays” at being himself.4 But is this not precisely the accusation Stendhal, as a narrator, launches against his own fictional characters, and which they themselves incessantly