Erich Auerbach (1892-1957)




Paul Valéry (1871-1945)

AUERBACH, Erich

'Insofar as the serious realism of modern times cannot represent man otherwise as embedded in a total reality, political, social, and economic, which is concrete and constantly evolving - as is the case today in any novel or film - Stendhal is its founder.' (p. 463)

Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Culture, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2003.


GIDE, André

'Stendhal has never provided my nourishment but I always come back.  He is the cuttle fish on which I sharpen my beak.' (December 8, 1907, p. 255)*

Journal, NRF, Paris, 1939.
 

'Stendhal's writing has such an energetic style because he doesn't wait for a sentence to be perfectly formed in his head before writing it.' (November 27, 1941, p. 165)*

Journal, 1939-1942, NRF, Paris, 1946.


LESSING, Doris

'Opening a Stendhal after - you have to think - a far too long interval, there is, at least for me, a rush of exhilaration, as if you have turned a corner and look! - there's an old friend you haven't seen for a time and you have forgotten what an extraordinary being he is.'

Foreword to Memoirs of an Egotist, Stendhal, Hesperus Press, 2003


VALERY, Paul

'One never gets over Stendhal. I can think of no greater compliment.'
(pp. 137-139)*

Variété II, Stendhal, NRF, Paris, 1930.


ZOLA, Emile

'Stendhal is above all a psychologist.' (p. 254)*

‘For me, Stendhal is not an observer who begins by observation so as to reach the truth by means of logic. He is instead a logician who begins with logic and often achieves the truth by means of observation.’ (p. 256)*

‘Nobody before him [Stendhal] has described love with more truth.’ (p. 261)*

Écrits sur le roman, Livre de Poche, Paris 2004.



*In French in the original. Translated by J. J. Haldane.