The Charterhouse Of Parma (2000) - Plot & Excerpts
1.5"La logica della passione ha sempre fretta: è sollecitata da un così profondo interesse a sapere la verità, che non si può permettere inutili precauzioni"In effetti, prima di concepire questo romanzo Stendhal avrebbe fatto meglio a mettere il preservativo alla penna. Premessa: ho amato Il rosso e il nero. Sono da incolpare se mi aspettavo di provare per La certosa di Parma come minimo un tiepido affetto? Forse per questa ragione, ho sopportato a testa china e manine giunte le prime cento pagine ripetendomi a mo' di mantra "ora migliora, ora acquista un senso". E invece niente. Non dite che non ci ho provato.Dopo, dunque, un attacco che definirei eufemisticamente in sordina, la storia continua nello stesso identico tono; il lettore si sente sempre come sull'orlo di un trampolino, come se non stesse leggendo altro che un'introduzione illegalmente lunga nell'attesa che la storia vera, quella per cui ha speso i suoi bravi euri, abbia inizio. Attesa vana. Il tapino lettore non avrà niente del genere; o meglio, ne avrà un vago assaggio poco dopo l'inizio della parte seconda, al momento della prigionia di Fabrizio, laddove si inserisce anche la sola nota positiva che sono riuscita a trovare in tutto il romanzo -che non è esattamente un campione di brevità, per cui facciamoci due conti: mi riferisco al principio della storia d'amore tra Fabrizio e Clelia. Lui in prigione e lei al balcone di fronte, un corteggiamento fatto di sguardi e cenni, rossori e sottintesi. Come idea è bellissima; come sviluppo, almeno per quanto mi riguarda, siamo lontani anni luce.Francamente non ricordo se Il rosso e il nero sia scritto nel medesimo modo, ma quel che è certo è che, anche se lo fosse, non ritiene nemmeno un decimo della pesantezza che affligge La certosa di Parma. Metà del romanzo parla di tutto tranne che della storia principale, divaga in un numero tale di modi e su un numero tale di persone senza le quali la trama andrebbe benissimo avanti ugualmente che non ho nemmeno voglia di mettermi a farne un elenco, né ne vedo l'utilità. Il punto è che il romanzo sembra non andar mai da nessuna parte, e anche dopo, quando Clelia entra definitivamente nei giochi e pare che i binari siano stati finalmente imboccati, si continua a deragliare sin troppo spesso.Tedio tralasciando, qualche parola per i motivi per cui anche quel poco di trama che c'è è radicalmente stupida.Fabrizio inizialmente si prospettava come un personaggio favoloso, intrigante, sfaccettato, ma poi si capisce che in realtà è solo iperattivo e internamente sordo alle reprimende del proprio bistrattato sistema nervoso. La sua innamorata è più o meno sul suo stesso livello, ma nessuno dei due si manifesta in tutta la propria disagiatissima gloria fino al finale.Eh. Il finale.Mai, nonostante l'infinità di libri che ho letto e di storie che ho ascoltato, mi sono imbattuta in un finale talmente orrido.Per chi vuole soffrire o farsi due risate con me: (view spoiler)[Clelia fa voto alla Madonna di non rivedere mai più Fabrizio e i due si separano. Lui prima si ritira in un eremo, poi diventa un predicatore; infine Clelia capisce di non poter fare a meno di lui e, nonostante sia ormai sposata con un altro, gli accorda degli incontri notturni, perché, secondo la sua logica sballata, se si incontrano al buio lei non lo vedrà e dunque non verrà meno al proprio voto. Ripeto: se si incontrano al buio lei non lo vedrà e dunque non verrà meno al proprio voto.Dovrebbe essere uno di quei sottili escamotage pensati per riempire il lettore d'ammirazione nei confronti delle straripanti capacità cognitive dei protagonisti? Non ha funzionato.Nella mia zona abbiamo un detto bellissimo: mi 'nni fazzu iabbu. Significa "me ne meraviglio", ma implica uno sconcerto condito da una spolverata di disgusto, con l'augurio che il misfatto o la disgrazia in questione non colpisca mai se stessi o i propri cari. Ora, Clelia, non pensi che la tua cara Madonna di te si 'nni fici iabbu? Anyway, siamo ancora al male minore. Ritroviamo i due dopo tre anni: hanno avuto un figlio, ma Clelia ancora non accetta di vedere Fabrizio (i miei poveri neuroni). Lui, disperato, le dice che può continuare a reggere la situazione soltanto se potrà prendere il bambino con sé e vivere almeno con lui, se non con lei. I due giovani geni allora fanno credere a tutti che il bimbo sia malato, anche al marito di Clelia; per far ciò, lei lo deve tenere segregato in casa, e per questo il bambino si ammala sul serio. Fabrizio se lo porta via e dopo poco il bimbo muore.Ancora, ripeto: dopo poco il bimbo muore. Muore perché i suoi genitori sono due idioti.In rapida successione muoiono anche Clelia e Fabrizio. A 'sto punto, ben gli sta, dico io. (hide spoiler)]
The latest in a line of books that I end up reading because it is on someone else's list. This one is not bad although it does not fare as well as some of the others. The biggest problem for me is that the sort of book that it promises to be in the first 100 pages or so is not the book that The Charterhouse of Parma actually ends up being. You might expect, based on the cover blurb and the early action, that this novel is chiefly the story of Fabrizio del Dongo (who I'll probably always think of as Febreeze) and his idiotic, yet hilarious desire to go from Italy to France in order to join Napoleon's army. "Hey, that Napoleon guy seems great! I should try to fight with him." Which was apparently an absurd thought for a second son of a minor Italian noble house to have, and which the narrative makes quite plain is absurd for anyone.Perhaps because I had only just read Don Quixote not long before this, I couldn't help but notice there's some similarity in that journey, although Fabrizio is mostly by his lonesome and doesn't have a Sancho kind of sidekick as he goes and tries to join the army. But it turns out that, even in the early 19th century, just walking up and trying to join an army was kind of a bad idea - and so, also, was fighting for Napoleon, being as how he lost and all of the nobles hated what he represented. This is all very funny, the humor inherent in this situation rendered faithfully by the translator, in my estimation.The plot swerves from this promising beginning into a convoluted mass of court intrigue that gives just about as much weight to the presence of Fabrizio's Aunt Gina, the sister of the Marchese, who has her own set of adventures to carry on, none of which are nearly as interesting as the ridiculousness of Fabrizio's beginning. The aunt is only about ten years older than Fabrizio, which is a lot but also not a lot, and for some reason she ends up being in love with him. This sounds gross for reasons of incest, but the novel gives us the implication that Fabrizio is actually the illegitimate child of a French officer who was quartered with the family estate, so he's not actually related by blood to his nominal aunt - it's unclear how widely known this fact is; Fabrizio himself never seems to be aware of it, but it could explain why he is treated by others the way that he is.There is also some significant time spent in a prison, which time seems to be nothing more than a vehicle for angst and repetitive threats of poisoning, execution, and being left by a lover that one has never actually met. What? I don't know. I found all of this rather tedious and boring, though there were amusing bits sprinkled in, such as when one character talks about having hired a French chef who makes a lot of puns, and he knows he's safe from being poisoned because "puns are incompatible with murder." Some cartoony Hollywood villains would probably disagree with that assessment nowadays.As with so many others, I ended up wanting to like it more than I actually did. Mostly only finished this out of stubbornness and it really only gets three stars because the first quarter is very good.
What do You think about The Charterhouse Of Parma (2000)?
I read this novel after finishing The Red and the Black, which I thought was the far better novel of the two. The scenes in which Fabrizio joins Napoleon's army at Waterloo really come to life and shine in the narrative of Stendahl, as he had been a soldier in battle for Napoleon during his lifetime. Fabrizio really is a bit too much of a narcissist and after a while, despite his handsome youth and intellect, I found myself tiring of him. He really made a number of knuckleheaded moves with his career and women so much so that, at times, he seems to fall far too short of the heroic stature that I'm sure Stendahl intended for him. The women, whom he frequently spurned, seemed to me far superior characters in their nobility than Fabrizio. I did find shades of Lord Byron's "Prisoner of Chillon" in some aspects of the irony of his finding solace in his imprisonment. I kept hoping that the Duchess and he would become a permanent item and Stendahl kept me guessing on the plot twists. The novel was written in only about seven weeks, which is a fairly remarkable creative outpouring. Considering the big rush the writing is quite good but I wonder why he hastened the creative execution to such an extreme. Great writing usually just doesn't emerge in such a brief span and speed is not conducive to quality, as most of the hacks on bestseller lists in America conclusively prove. The Red and the Black is just so much more finished and impressive as a novel than Charterhouse, which struck me in places as contrived and unlikely and tried my willing suspension of disbelief to the point at which I found myself saying, "Come on, Fabrizio, grow up." Stendahl is a master of the epigram and there are plenty here to savor, moreso in the context of courtly life in Red and the Black, perhaps. The landscape was beautifully rendered by Stendahl in Lake Como. His portrait work with his characters is quite good. If you only intend to read one of Stendahl's novels, then I recommend The Red and the Black. But if you've read and enjoyed it, odds are that the Charterhouse of Parma will also hold you in its spell. Charterhouse, however, falls just shy of greatness because it was so rushed, I think, and Red and the Black is a masterpiece that justly ranks Stendahl with Balzac, Moliere, Flaubert and Zola.
—David Lentz
Stendhal depicts both the amorous passion and the predilection for court intrigue present in the Italian character, yet he does this with an irony and a political analysis indisputably French, thereby producing not only a great realistic novel but a work which comments on the romantic novels that have gone before. And yet--here is the marvelous part--"The Charterhouse of Parma," for all its realism, is still an incredibly romantic novel, containing a battle, a duel, a knife fight, various disguises for the hero and others, a poetry-writing revolutionary highwayman, and the most romantic setting for a love-affair possible--a passionate encounter between an unjustly imprisoned young nobleman and the beautiful daughter of the prison warden, soon to be married to a rich man she despises! None of this, however, turns out quite the way that it would for Dumas pere, for, in the world of Stendhal, the romantic individual's impulses--as in real life--are often thwarted by circumstance.
—Bill Kerwin
I read “The Red And The Black” a few months ago and decided to follow it up with “The Charterhouse of Parma.” I feel “The Red And The Black” is the better book. Julien Sorel is one of the most interesting and complex characters in literature and the book’s architecture was very well thought out. Nevertheless, both books are well deserving of their high reputations.Of all the novelists of his era, Stendhal was perhaps the most passionate music lover. He wrote books on Haydn, Mozart, Rossini and others. He went to La Scala almost nightly when in Milan. “The Red And The Black” is perhaps chamber music; but “The Charterhouse Of Parma,” it seems, is pure opera.In many ways the story line of “The Charterhouse of Parma” is a set piece with an innocent and naïve hero, scheming and manipulative courtiers, and purely evil villains. It has battles, court intrigue, murder, disguises, poison, imprisonment, escapes and unrequited love. But there is something that makes this book very different from the superficial entertainment of an Italian Opera. There is a ironic realism and cynical disengagement that give it a distinctly modern world view despite its Romantic trappings. There is biting political commentary. Most of all there is a profound interest in the complex ambiguities of life.One of the first things that one notices is the blunt, almost rushed, matter-of-fact style that Stendhal uses. The book was dictated in 52 days and one wonders how the book would have read had it been written at a more leisurely pace. This apparent liability, however, often seems to add to the immediacy of the novel. It should be noted, however, that this is Stendhal’s style in “The Red And The Black” as well. It just seemed to me to be more pronounced in “The Charterhouse of Parma,” giving the book a generally brisk rhythm, although admittedly with a largo interlude in the Farnese Tower. The hero (actually anti-hero), Fabrice del Dongo, is plagued by uncertainties--was he actually in the fighting at Waterloo; does he have the capacity to love; does he find liberation in imprisonment? He is also a pawn in the political (and romantic) manipulations of the two most psychologically interesting characters in the novel: his aunt, the Duchess Sanseverina and her lover, Count Mosca. Two themes that occur repeatedly throughout the book are of particular interest: imprisonment and the eyes of the beloved.The central theme of Fabrice’s imprisonment in the Fabrese Tower is echoed by other forms of “imprisonment” throughout the novel: Count Mosca’s imprisonment as first minister to a tyrannical prince of Parma; the Duchess Sanseverina’s imprisonment in a passion for Fabrice that is not returned; Clelia’s imprisonment in her piety; Fabrice’s eventual imprisonment in The Church. Stendhal felt that the society of his time--with its emphasis on position, wealth and prestige--stifled true freedom. This view is reflected in the many types of moral, romantic and physical imprisonment we find in the novel.The second theme that I found interesting is perhaps more subtle. The eyes of the beloved play an important role in the central relationship between Fabrice and Clelia. Stendhal had written earlier in his career about the “crystallization” of love, a process in which new perfections are added to the lover‘s impression of the loved one. This plays out in Fabrice’s and Clelia’s wordless nine month love affair and is echoed at the end of the book when, their love doomed, they encounter each other at the court of the new prince. Much is communicated without words being exchanged. I felt that this second theme of silent communication enriched the more explicit themes of imprisonment. The characters are imprisoned within their own souls and seeking the beloved but never quite attaining the ultimate union. They are truly prisoners of love. Eventually, the price of Fabrizo's freedom becomes the relinquishing of Clelia's right to set eyes on her beloved.
—Brian
