of his works, most notably Le Rouge et leNoir (1830), where it supplied fully
seven out of seventy-one chapter epigraphs, shaped certain scenes and themes
...
TWO PARODIC CHARACTERS IN LE ROUGE ET LENOIR: PRINCE KORASOFF AND THE DUC DE FITZ-FOLKE GEORGE
M. RosA
is well known that Stendhal greatly esteemed Byron's Don Juan (1819-24) and that he was strongly influenced by that poem in a number of his works, most notably Le Rouge et leNoir (1830), where it supplied fully seven out of seventy-one chapter epigraphs, shaped certain scenes and themes, suggested images and elements of plot, and, what is most relevant in the present context, inspired various details of characterization. 1 The best-known example of a derivative Byronic character in Le Rouge et le Nair is the Marechale de Fervaques, a vain, prudish woman of fashion whom Stendhal explicitly compares in Book II, Chapter 26, to Lady Adeline Amundeville, a character from the English cantos of Don Juan (Cantos XI-XVI) who figures therein as a parodic model of aristocratic pretension, reserve, and false virtue. 2 But there are two other Byronically parodic personages in Book II of Le Rouge et le Nair whose literary pedigree has been consistently ignored in discussions of the novel: Prince Korasoff and the Due de Fitz-Folke. In Book II, Chapter 7, of Le Rouge et le Nair, the protagonist, Julien Sorel, receives an intensive course on how to behave in Parisian high society from his new employer and benefactor, the Marquis de la Mole, who seeks to complete the young man's education by sending him on a two-month secret mission to London. As we shall see, the mission in 1 On Stendhal's numerous debts to Don Juan in Le Rouge et leNoir, see VermeerMeyer, Sonnenfeld 146-47, 153, Rosa (1987) 219-21, and the texts cited in note 2 below. 2 On the parallel between Lady Adeline Arnundeville and the Marechale de Fervaques, see Strickland 328, Vermeer-Meyer 505-07, and Rosa (1987) 227.
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question leads Julien down a path previously paved for him by the eponymous hero of Byron's Don Juan, who himself had served as a special envoy to London in the service of Catherine the Great. Upon arriving in the British capital, Julien, much like Byron's Juan, finds that he has no significant duties to discharge, and devotes himself for the most part to frivolous pursuits. Above all, he is taught the rudiments of "la haute fatuite" by aristocratic Russian dandies, including one Prince Korasoff, who advise him to cultivate "cette mine froide eta mille lieues de la sensation presente, que nous cherchons tant a nous donner" (Stendhal 2:86). The mark of the true man of fashion, according to Korasoff and his foppish companions, is a complete repression of spontaneous feeling, and the counsel they give Julien is analogous to that ,which Byron's narrator sardonically extends to Don Juan (Canto XI, stanza 86) to prepare him for life in the English beau monde: "Be hypocritical, be cautious, be I Not what you seem . .."(Byron 453). Indeed, one piece of advice that Korasoff gives Julien - "Faites toujours le contraire de ce qu 'on attend de vous" (Stendhal2:86) - 3 appears to derive from a precedent that Stendhal claims Byron to have set in real life in 1816 at Milan, where the future author of Don Juan and the future author of Le Rouge et le Nair had frequented one another for a period of almost two weeks. 4 In an essay entitled "Lord Byron en Italie" that was published in March 1830, shortly before Le Rouge et le Nair (published in November 1830), Stendhal maintains that, "pendant un tiers de la joumee, lord Byron etait dandy" (Stendhal 46:245) 5 and that the poet was motivated by dandyism in much of his conduct at Milan: Plusieurs [jolies femmes] s'attendaient que lord Byron demanderait a leur etre presente. Soit orgueil, timidite, ou plutot desir de dandy, de faire precisement le contraire de la chose alaquelle on s'attendait, il declina toujours cet honneur. (Stendhal46:249-50) 6
3 Korasoff repeats this advice to Julien in Book II, Chapter 24, of Le Rouge et le Noir, when they meet by chance near Strasbourg: "rappelez-vous le grand principe de votre siecle: soyez le contraire de ce a quoi l'on s'attend" (Stendhal2:287). 4 On the subject of Stendhal's personal contacts with Byron in Milan, see Moore, Strickland, Gatti, Rosa (1978 and 1991), and Menasce. 5 Stendhal adds on the same page: "Non content d'etre le plus bel homme d' Angleterre, lord Byron aurait aussi voulu etre l'homme le plus a la mode. Quand il etait dandy, c'etait avec le fremissement de !'adoration et de la jalousie qu'il pronon9ait le nom de Brummel .... " 6 The dandyish rule of conduct set forth in this passage and in Le Rouge et le Noir also is echoed in several Stendhalian texts of the middle and late 1830s. See Rosa (1985).
TWO PARODIC CHARACTERS IN LE ROUGE ET LENOIR
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And there can be little doubt that this passage and the Korasoffian precept it anticipates ("Faites toujours le contraire de ce qu 'on attend de vous") are meaningfully interrelated, as the former predates the latter by just a few months. 7 Byron's implied presence as an habitue of and a commentator on the snobbish, elegant world depicted in Book II of Le Rouge et le Nair thus is established near the very outset of that book. But it is primarily as a satirist, and only secondarily as an erstwhile dandy, that Byron serves to define "la haute fatuite." There is no question of drawing more than a superficial comparison between him and Korasoff: insofar as the Russian lord is an extension of the English one, he is merely an animated pose, for Stendhal realized that Byron had been able to ridicule fashionable poseurs all the more effectively for having understood their art. In "Lord Byron en Italie" itself, Stendhal takes care to point out that, "quand la fatuite de naissance ou de beaute n'etait pas de service aupres de lord Byron, il devenait tout a coup grand poete et homme de sens," and specifically maintains that, in Don Juan, Byron had elevated himself above his own limitations to produce a "poeme divin" of such satiric power and insightfulness that it had thoroughly demoralized the entire English upper class (Stendhal46:246, 247, 257). 8 If any proof is needed that Korasoff's burlesque rules of social etiquette were conceived as the object of a Byronic satire rather than as a satire of Byron, that proof is to be found in the same chapter - and on the very same page - of Le Rouge et le Nair where Julien is advised to do "le contraire de ce qu'on attend de vous." In describing the milieu of the nobleman-dandy, Prince Korasoff, Stendhal borrows from Byron's own satire of a nobleman-dandy, when Julien - who recently had heard of Lord Byron for the first time in a discussion at the Hotel de la Mole (Stendhal 2:32) - suddenly is presented to one of the most comically obscure characters in all of Don Juan. 7 As Lord Byron en Italie was published by the Revue de Paris in March 1830, and as Stendhal's articles in French and English periodicals almost invariably were written in the month preceding their publication, it is very likely that Stendhal penned that essay in February 1830. As for Chapter 7 in Book II of Le Rouge et leNoir, it probably dates from July 1830, as Chapter 8 of Book II was written on the 25th of that same month, according to a note ofStendhal's cited by Jules Marsan (ur). 8 In Stendhal's "Souvenirs sur lord Byron" of August 1829, an essay dating from shortly before he undertook Le Rouge et le Noir, the novelist similarly argues that Don Juan is the one poem in which Byron transcended certain limitations of his background to achieve artistic maturity (Stendhal35: 171-72).
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ROMANCE NOTES
In Canto XIV (stanzas 44-45) of Byron's poem, we learn how various people reacted to the Duchess of Fitz-Fulke's flirtations with Juan after he had supplanted Lord Fitz-Plantagenet in the lady's affections: The circle smiled, then whispered, and then sneered; The misses bridled, and the matrons frowned; Some hoped things might not turn out as they feared; Some would not deem such women could be found; Some ne'er believed one half of what they heard; Some looked perplexed, and others looked profound: And several pitied with sincere regret Poor Lord Augustus Fitz-Plantagenet. But what is odd, none ever named the Duke, Who, one might think, was something in the affair: True, he was absent, and, 'twas rumoured, took But small concern about the when, or where, Or what his consort did: if he could brook Her gaieties, none had a right to stare: Theirs was that best of unions, past all doubt, Which never meets, and therefore can't fall out. (Byron 527-28)
There Byron leaves the Duchess's husband, fixed forever in a state of neglectful cuckoldry. "None ever named the Duke"- but Stendhal does name him, and even has him invite Julien and Prince Korasoff to dinner: Julien se couvrit de gloire un jour dans le salon du due de Fitz-Folke, qui l'avait engage a diner, ainsi que le prince Korasoff. On attendit pendant une heure. La fa
