2 There is no question that Stendhal began writing The Red and the Black in 1829 and completed the novel in

2 There is no question that Stendhal began writing The Red and the Black in 1829 and completed the novel in 1830.

Translator's Note

Civitavecchia, some forty miles from Rome, where he spent many of his final years. During the 1830s Stendhal began two novels, Lucien Leuwen and Lamiel, both of which remained unfinished and were not published until long after his death. He also undertook two autobiographical works, Memoirs of an Egotist and The Life of Henri Brulard, which likewise appeared posthumously. In 1835 Stendhal was awarded the Legion of Honor for services to literature; the following year he returned to Paris on an extended leave of absence. There he started a biography of Napoleon and completed Memoirs of a Tourist (1838), a popular travel guide to France. Then, between November 4 and December 26 of 1838, the author dictated his last great novel, The Charterhouse of Parma (1839), a tale of political intrigue set in Italy. In failing health, he lived long enough to rejoice in Balzac's generous praise of it. Stendhal died in Paris, following a series of strokes, on March 23, 1842, and was buried the next day in the cemetery of Montmartre. "I will be famous around 1880," Stendhal once predicted. Indeed, at about this time he began to attract widespread attention, and many of his previously unpublished books appeared—including A Life of Napoleon (1876), Journal of Stendhal (1888), Lamiel (1889), The Life of Henri Brulard (1890), Memoirs of an Egotist (1892), and Lucien Leuwen (1894). In the twentieth century such writers as Paul Léautaud, André Gide, and Paul Valéry have acclaimed Stendhal's work. "We should never be finished with Stendhal," said Valéry. "I can think of no greater praise than that." Translator's Note Stendhal was largely misunderstood in his lifetime (when he was noticed at all), and has continued to be misperceived in the century and a half since his death. Translating—as opposed to reading— Le Rouge et Le Noir has given me new respect for the virtuosic brilliance of Stendhal's prose, and for the passionate intensity that makes this novel a profound and moving tragedy. My text has been the 1972 Gallimard Folio edition, which is based on but has been updated from the Pléiade version, edited and annotated by Henri Martineau in 1932. The meaning of the book's title has been disputed. The best short account of the various interpretations seems to me that of Professor René Ternois: The title The Red and the Black3 was not understood by [Stendhal's] contemporaries. A great deal has been written to explain it, and many silly things have been said. Probably the "red" symbolizes dreams of glory, in the revolutionary or in the imperial armies, and the "black" [symbolizes] ecclesiastical ambition—in short, the dilemma created for Julien Sorel, or, more likely still, the impossible dream versus the sad necessity. It is very possible that the title concerns the two colors in the game of roulette; life itself is a game; Julien hesitates for a long time before placing his bet; he bets on the red, and loses. At a different point, he would have bet on the black, and might have won. He did not have the chance. The epigraphs placed by Stendhal before each of the book's many chapters, until the dramatic final chapters (which have been given no epigraphs), are frequently, deliberately, and notoriously unreliable.4 Many were written by Stendhal himself, and ascribed ironically to