Love

In 1818, when Stendhal was in his mid-thirties, he met and fell passionately in love with the beautiful Mathilde Dembowski. She, however, was quick to make it clear that she did not return his affections, and in his despair he turned to the written word to exorcise his love and explain his feelings.

Drawing on history, literature, and his own experience of unrequited passion, Love is a thinly disguised picture of the author''s innermost feelings.

Stendahl''s obsession with Mathilde Viscontini Dembowski is at the heart of this book. For her part, she neither returned his love nor understood him. In an attempt to expain his feelings to her—and to exorcize his love—he dissects his passion. Bringing together the conflicting sides of his nature, the deeply emotional and the coolly analytical, Stendhal constructed a work that is both acutely personal and universally applicable.

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