Adepts in Self-Portraiture

by Stefan Zweig

  LIKENESS

  Tu es laid, mais... tu as de la physiognomie.

  UNCLE GAGNON TO YOUNG HENRI BEYLE

  The attic in the Rue Richelieu is lighted by two wax candles, flickering in their holders on the writing table. Stendhal has been at work on his novel since noon. Now he throws down his pen. Enough for today! A wash, a saunter, a good meal, pleasant company, women — by these he will be refreshed!

  He makes his preparations, thrusts his arms into his coat, pushes back his wig. Now for a final glance in the mirror! He contemplates his own image, and promptly pulls a face which brings a sardonic fold to the corner of his mouth. No, he thinks, yours is not a handsome face! Such an unrefined, bulldog countenance, chubby, rubicund, fat and well-liking. Ah, how repulsively thick and nubbly his nose is as it lies amidships in this provincial face! The eyes? Not so bad; small, black, sparkling, filled with the restless light of curiosity. But they are too deep-set and are too small, compared with the heavy brows and the square-cut visage. Had he not been nicknamed “le Chinois” when he was serving his time in the army? Is there any redeeming feature? Stendhal angrily pursues his investigations. Not one! There is not a glimpse of tenderness, of spiritual vitality; every trait is heavy and commonplace, is massive and broad; a countenance set in a framework of brown hair — and yet maybe this face is better than the body it surmounts. For the body is stunted, the neck thick and short — he would rather not look at it further. He hates his rotund belly, and the abbreviated legs that must carry the heavy mass of Henri Beyle’s corpulence. He has never forgotten that his schoolfellows used to call him “the moving tower.” Stendhal would like to seek some consolation as he gazes at himself in the unflattering glass. Ah, his hands! There, at least, is something he can be pleased with. Delicate as a woman’s, the nails cut to a point and polished, they certainly betray a little intelligence and gentle birth. His skin, too, is of fine texture, smooth and lustrous as a girl’s; surely it tells of noble susceptibilities? But who ever deigns to notice such details in a man? Women look to a man’s face and figure — and, as far as he is concerned, he has known for fifty years now that his face and figure are hopelessly plebeian. Augustin Filon described his head as “une grosse tête de tapissier”; Monselet characterized him as “un diplomate avec un visage de droguiste.” He feels that even such comparisons are too lenient, too friendly, and himself gives a verdict that is less flattering: “the face of an Italian butcher.”

  It would not be so bad, he muses, if this obese and massive body housed a virile and ruthless spirit. There are women who have no confidence in any but broad-shouldered men, who would rather trust themselves to a Cossack than to a dandy. Yet he knows that his rough and boorish exterior is only a decoy, a false bait. In this vast and fleshly tabernacle there is housed a being well-nigh morbid in its sensitiveness. Medical men have described Stendhal as “un monstre de sensibilité.” How can so Ariel a spirit be caged within a Caliban’s fleshly personality? Some wicked fairy must surely have played hanky-panky with his soul when he was lying in his cradle. The changeling spirit can never accommodate itself to its unseemly abode; it shudders and trembles at every provocation. An open window in the neighboring room brings a shiver to the delicate skin; a door shut with a bang causes the nerves to start and quiver; an evil smell entails nausea and giddiness; a woman draws near, and immediately he is flurried, anxious, fainthearted, or else (for these things sometimes act by contraries) he becomes unmannerly. What an incomprehensible mixture, indeed! Why should he be afflicted with such mountains of flesh and fat and paunch, why should he be so broad and big-boned, when he was endowed with a spirit as fine as gossamer? Why must he be equipped with so dull, uninteresting, and coarse a tenement for his exquisitely responsive, intricate, and ethereal soul?

  He turns away from the looking-glass. There is nothing to be done with such an exterior; Stendhal has been well aware of this ever since his youth. A veritable magician among tailors is helpless before such a figure. Press the flabby paunch up as much as you may, clothe the ridiculously abbreviated legs in the finest of Lyons silks, disguise the prematurely grey whiskers with a manly looking brown dye, set an elegant wig aloft to hide the bald and shiny pate, polish the nails and pare them to heart’s content — nothing can help! Such things serve merely to furbish him up for a while, but no woman will trouble to turn her head at his passage or go into ecstasies over his appearance as Madame de Rênal does over her Julien or Madame de Chas teller over her Lucien Leuwen. Women take no notice of him. Even when he was a young man, a lieutenant, they ignored him; how can he expect them to act differently now, when his soul has got stuck in a veritable bog of fat, and when age is graving wrinkles on his forehead? Good luck with the fair sex is impossible to the possessor of such a face. Yet what other happiness is there in this world?

  One thing remains: to be nimble-witted, clever, interesting; to attract others by the play of intelligence; to divert attention from the body and the face by directing the observer’s thoughts towards the inner man; to dazzle and seduce by surprise attacks and by eloquence. “Les talents peuvent consoler de l’absence de la beauté.” If one has the misfortune to possess such a physique one must catch women by the display of mental faculties, must stimulate their curiosity, seeing that there is nothing to arouse their aesthetic sense. Thus one must play on the melancholy string with a sentimental woman, on the cynical string with a frivolous woman, and sometimes one has to strike up a completely different tune; one must forever be on guard, forever be witty and amusing. “Amusez une femme et vous l’aurez.” Cunningly seize upon every weakness, make use of the least hint at boredom; pretend to be ardent when you are in reality cool and collected, or deceive your mistress with an assumption of unconcern when you are glowing with passion; bewilder her with abrupt changes of mood, and trick her into perplexity; always lead her to think that you are different from other men. Above all, never miss your opportunities, never be deterred by fancying you are making a mess of things. Women may forget a man’s face! Did not Titania herself one moonlit night bestow her kisses on an ass?

  Stendhal puts his hat on jauntily, takes his yellow gloves in hand, and glances once more in the mirror to see if he has achieved the cold and mocking smile he wishes to affect. Yes, that is the expression he would like to take with him when he pays Madame de T. his respects this evening; an expression at once ironical, cynical, frivolous, and icy. It is always worthwhile trying to interest and astound a company with some sally or other which will shield his unhappy face from notice. Immediately upon entering the room he must bluff the guests, must conceal his inner trepidation by keeping up a continuous stream of braggadocio. As he goes downstairs he thinks out some apt phrase wherewith to make his entry. He will have himself announced as Monsieur le Marchand César Bombet; then he himself will appear as a talkative, bombastic wool-stapler, never allowing anyone else to get in a word edgewise, talking of his business at such length, so brilliantly, with such impish insolence, that he will have the whole gathering in a ripple of laughter, and the ladies will have grown accustomed to his uncouth appearance. Follow this up with a running fire of anecdote, both broad and merry, calculated to titillate their senses; seek out a retired corner sufficiently dark to veil his physical deficiencies, quaff a couple of glasses of punch — then perhaps, perhaps, towards midnight, the ladies may declare him to be “quite charming!”

  FILM OF HIS LIFE

  Je serai célèbre vers 1880.

  1799. The diligence from Grenoble to Paris halts at Nemours to change horses. Excited groups of people; placards on the walls; newspapers. Yesterday young General Bonaparte dealt the Republic the finishing stroke, kicked the Directory out of office, and proclaimed himself Consul. The travelers are agog, they enter into lively discussions; the only one who shows no interest is a sixteen-year-old youth, broad-shouldered, rosy-cheeked. What cares he for Republic or Consulate? He is on his way to Paris, ostensibly to become a student at the Polytechnic, but in reality in order to be
quit of his life in a provincial town. To live in Paris! Paris! Paris! The very sound of the name lets loose a flood of dream images. Paris means luxury, elegance, cheerfulness; in Paris one can soar as it were on wings, be high-spirited, anti-provincial, free; above all, Paris spells women, many women. Some woman, young, beautiful, tender, elegant, resembling Victorine Cably, the actress he had loved from afar in Grenoble, may come his way. He will get to know her in romantic circumstances, he will rescue her from a carriage accident by stopping the runaway horses. He will perform some great, heroic deed for her sake, and she will become his sweetheart.

  The diligence lumbers on its way, unmercifully grinding these premature dreams under its wheels. The lad has hardly a look to spare for the landscape, hardly a word to exchange with his traveling companions. This theoretical Don Juan has his mind full of fantastic adventures, romantic deeds, women, Paris. At length they pass the barrier, and the wheels thunder over cobbled streets, the coach threads its way along narrow, dirty alleys overshadowed by houses, reeking of stale food and rank with poverty. Horror seizes the stripling as he contemplates the city of his dreams. So this is Paris; “ce n’est donc que cela?” Henceforward the phrase will often drop from his lips: after his first duel; when the army crosses the Saint Bernard; the night of his first love experience. Reality will forever disappoint this inveterate weaver of romance.

  He is deposited in front of a dispassionate house in the Rue Saint Dominique. Here, in an attic five flights up, in a small, dark room as exiguous as a prison cell, lighted by a tiny dormer window — indeed a forcing-house for melancholy — young Henri Beyle passes the first weeks. He does not open one of his books on mathematics the whole of that time. For hours on end, he roams the streets looking at women. What a source of temptation they are, to be sure, in their neo-Roman dresses, half naked; how alluringly they make merry with their beaux; how exquisite their laughter, so airy, so enticing! He dares not accost any of them. How should a clumsy, stupid youth, dressed in a green coat of provincial cut, with no pretensions to elegance, make advances to these charming creatures? He does not even venture to approach the gay girls who loaf around the street lamps ready to sell themselves to the first bidder; his heart aches with a sullen envy of other young scamps more audacious than he. He has never a friend to turn to; no society to amuse him; no occupation. His humor is morose as he wanders about the grimy streets, dreaming of romantic adventures, so lost in his own thoughts that he is in constant risk of being run over.

  At last, his spirit brought to heel by an intolerable yearning for the warmth, the intimacy, the conversation of fellow mortals, he goes to see his wealthy relatives, the Darus. They give him a hearty welcome, invite him to their beautiful house, make him feel at home. Alas, Henri Beyle cannot appreciate their kindness to the full, for do they not hail from the provinces? This, in his eyes, is “original sin”! They live in comfortable circumstances, while his own purse is empty; that is galling to him in the extreme. Listless, dumbstruck, gawky, he sits at table with these kindly folk, their secret enemy, hiding his poignant desire for tenderness behind a mask, sulky, ironical, mulish. Old Daru must look upon his youthful relative as an unpleasant and ungrateful guest. Later in the evening the family hero comes home from work, weary and taciturn. This is Pierre Daru. He is employed at the War Office, is becoming Bonaparte’s right hand man, the only confidant of the mighty general’s scheme of conquest. By temperament one would have thought the soldier would have had much in common with the budding author; yet, because the lad shut himself away behind a wall of silence, Pierre Daru looked upon Henri Beyle as a dullard. Was not young Daru making a translation of Horace into French verse, writing philosophical essays? Was he not destined, when his fighting days were over and he had laid aside his uniform, to add an Histoire de Venise to his credit? At the moment, however, he is immersed in the duties of his office, overshadowed by Bonaparte. All day long and far into the night, he labors at Napoleon’s side, writing letters at his master’s dictation, drawing up plans, making calculations. Henri hates Pierre because the latter seeks to advance him in his career. This is precisely what Beyle does not want; he wishes to keep himself to himself.

  One day Pierre Daru announces that he has secured a post for Beyle; the boy is to present himself at the War Office without delay. Now, under the lash of Daru’s tongue, Henri Beyle plies his pen from ten o’clock in the forenoon to one o’clock at night, writing, writing, writing, letters, reports, dispatches, until his fingers seem palsied with fatigue. What can all this scribbling be for, he wonders. Soon, the whole world will know! Unwittingly he has his share in the preparations for the Italian campaign which begins with the battle of Marengo and is to end with the creation of the Napoleonic empire. At length the “Moniteur” lets the secret out of the bag; war is declared. Henri Beyle heaves a sigh of relief. Daru, his tormentor, will have to go to army headquarters. Over and done with, this endless and purposeless writing! War is far better than to have to tolerate the two things he most dreads in life: work and boredom.

  May, 1800. Rearguard of the Army of Italy. Lausanne.

  Two cavalry officers rein in their mounts and laugh so heartily that the plumes on their shakos are set quivering. An absurd comedy is taking place before their eyes. Perched on the back of a restive mare, clinging to his seat as best he may, is a short-legged, chubby youth, dressed in a semi-civilian and semi-military costume. His bulging valise is strapped on to the saddle in front of him. He is hard put to it not to be thrown. His huge saber, dangling askew from his middle, bangs against the beast’s flank as she curvets and prances about the road. At length, beside herself with irritation, she rears, and pitches her rider over hedge and ditch into the field beyond.

  Royal entertainment, indeed! Then compassion takes hold of one of the onlookers. “Go and help the poor fellow,” exclaims Captain Burelviller, sending his orderly to the rescue. The man gallops away, flogs the mare into submission, slips the reins over his arm, stoops to give the awkward rider a leg-up, and returns with his trophies to his master’s side. Crimson with rage and mortification, the unhappy lad asks what the captain wants with him. Young Beyle, for it is he, the incurable romanticist, already has visions of arrest or of a duel. No sooner, however, does the captain learn that his interlocutor is a cousin of the mighty Daru, than his manner changes, he ceases guffawing over the joke and becomes serious and polite, begging Henri Beyle to give him the pleasure of his company for the remainder of the ride, and asking the recruit where he has been all this time. Henri flushes up again. How can he tell such a vulgarian that, with tears in his eyes, he has stood for hours before the house in Geneva where Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born? So he assumes a dashing, merry air, swaggers in so comical a manner that he wins the hearts of his companions. The latter, thereupon, give him an elementary lesson in horsemanship, show him how to hold the reins, how to buckle on his sword at the correct angle; they let him in to the secrets of the profession. Instantly Henri Beyle recovers from his discomfiture; he feels he is a real soldier, a hero.

  He feels he is a hero — or, let us say, he will not allow others to cast a doubt upon his courage. He would rather have his tongue cut out than betray himself by a sigh of anxiety or by an untactful word. As the army defiles over the Saint Bernard pass, he turns to his friend the captain and asks disparagingly: “Is this all?” The question, savoring as it does of disappointment, is becoming habitual to him. At Fort Bard, he again plays the astonished. Here, the cannons are thundering: “Is this war? No more than this?” Still, he has smelt powder; he has, as it were, lost one kind of virginity. He spurs his steed forward towards Italy, where he is to lose the other kind, his eagerness for the eternal adventure of Eros stimulated by his nodding acquaintanceship with Mars.

  Milan, 1801. Corso at the Porta Orientale.

  The war has delivered the women of Piedmont from captivity! Now they do not hesitate to drive unveiled and show their pretty faces to the French deliverers who throng the gay streets beneath t
he sunny skies. They pull up, in order to chat with their admirers or their lovers, smile at the saucy young officers with evident appreciation, and play a meaning game with fans and with flowers.

  Pressing back into the shadows, a callow sub-lieutenant is devouring these fine ladies with ardent eyes. Yes, Henri Beyle has suddenly been promoted to the position of subaltern in the sixth dragoon regiment, although he has not yet been in a single battle. When one has a cousin like Pierre Daru one can arrive anywhere! His clanking sword, his big thigh-boots with their shining spurs, his smart uniform, have changed the short, thickset yokel of yesterday into a very martial figure indeed.