Memories of an egotist

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Memories of an egotist (French souvenirs d'égotisme , German also confessions of an ego ) is an autobiographical text by Stendhal , which was written in 1832, but was only published posthumously in 1892. In it, Stendhal processes his experiences between 1821 and 1832. The text has remained a fragment.

shape

The text is divided into twelve sections, which have the character of diary entries and were written by Stendhal between June 20 and July 4, 1832 in Italy. A subsequent revision or structuring cannot be seen. After the last section it stops suddenly.

Unlike in his later autobiographical novel Life of Henry Brulard , in which he fictionalized himself with the pseudonym "Henry Brulard", Stendhal appears in the memories of an egotist under his real name Marie-Henri Beyle. The whole text is told in the first person, whereby an implicit reader is addressed in places who can be clearly located in the future; the year 1872 is mentioned at one point. Some maps drawn by Stendhal supplement the written records.

content

Stendhal's gravestone in the Montmartre cemetery with the motto "Scrisse-Amo-Visse"

The focus of memories of an egotist is on the year 1821, when Stendhal returned to Paris from Milan after his unfulfilled love for Mathilde Dembowski . Earlier and later events are only told in the form of flashbacks and anticipations. His Milanese years from 1817 to 1821 are traumatic for him and are never illuminated, although they are always at the center of Stendhal's considerations. Descriptions of people who Stendhal met in the salons of his time take up a very large space . Some of these are well-known people from contemporary history, such as Marie-Joseph Motier, Marquis de La Fayette , and others are just private contacts. In contrast, Stendhal's own life takes a backseat; only in a few places are longer passages told from it. A major exception is a chapter on his trip to London, in which he reports extensively on visits to the theater and brothels. In this chapter, Stendhal also wrote his own grave inscription, from which the verse "visse-scrisse-amò" (Italian: "he lived, wrote, loved") later actually appeared in a modified form on his tombstone in the Montmartre cemetery. Repeatedly implicit readers are addressed in the text who could possibly read this text thirty or forty years after Stendhal's death. He does not address his contemporaries. A recurring problem for Stendhal is the self-centeredness of his autobiographical text, which tends to repel him. (The word egotism in the title reflects this problem, but needs to be differentiated from egotism .)

reception

The text was not published during Stendhal's lifetime. He bequeathed the manuscript to Abraham Constantin with the condition that it should be published no earlier than ten years after his death. Since interest in Stendhal was not very great in the period after his death and only increased again towards the end of the 19th century, the first publication finally fell into the year 1892; a complete edition did not even appear until 1927. In the fin de siècle both the memories of an egotist and the life of Henry Brulard enjoyed a lively reception, in which psychoanalytic readings were mostly in the foreground, which ultimately led to a real personality cult around Stendhal. Both texts were also perceived as manifestations of boredom .

literature

  • Didier, Béatrice: Stendhal, autobiographe . Presses Univ. de France: Paris (1983) (French) ISBN 2-13-038064-6
  • DelLitto, Victor: Stendhal and the problems of the autobiography . Presses Univ. de Grenoble: Grenoble (1976) (French) ISBN 2-7061-0072-9

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Béatrice Didier: Stendhal, autobiographe . Presses Univ. de France: Paris (1983), p. 306
  2. ↑ Michael Nerlich : Stendhal , Rowohlt: Hamburg (1993), p. 94
  3. ↑ Le Nouveau Dictionnaire des Oeuvres . Robert Laffont: Paris (1996), vol. 6, p. 6846
  4. ↑ Michael Nerlich: Stendhal , Rowohlt: Hamburg (1993), p. 130