La Chartreuse de Parme (in English, The Charterhouse of Parma) is a unique effort in the history of literature. Legend says that Stendhal wrote it in 52 days, though he took much from earlier abandoned works and the 52 days represent the production of the novel in its present form. However, even though the 52-day writing is a bit of a misrepresentation, it is clear that the novel is uneven. Some of the inconsistencies are likely intentional, like the way that Gina, la duchesse Sanseverina for most of the novel, lies about her age to reduce it. Others, such as the one (or two?) steps to the room in which Fabrice is incarcerated for much of the novel, are clearly the effect of a short writing time and no editor. As if to highlight the unevenness of the novel, many of the names in the novel are an awful mélange of French and Italian, a fact that irritated me from start to finish.

The pace of the novel is a breakneck one, and the impression that I had was that the events described in the novel could be stretched by a less impatient author to fill three or more volumes of a series of romance novels (of a cheaper variety, to be sure). Despite this uneven nature, and the way that Stendhal can extend a single dialogue over ten pages, then skip three years in a single sentence (in which he, as the author in constant dialogue with his reader, begs the reader’s forgiveness for his selectivity), the novel is a far superior product (in my opinion) to his earlier book, Le Rouge et le Noir.

As Stendhal’s only other major finished work of literature, it is tempting to compare and contrast the two novels. Both have a forbidden love, both have a young man who would have preferred to be a soldier who is instead thrust into the clergy, both have a love triangle composed of two women (one older, the other younger) and one man, both end on a sombre note.

However, the stories behind these themes are far richer in La Chartreuse. The story is ostensibly that of Fabrice del Dongo, a young nobleman who becomes infected with the French Revolution and Napoleon in Italy of the first years of the Nineteenth Century. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that the story has several main characters, all of whom share equally in the telling of the story. Gina del Dongo, his paternal aunt and roughly 15 years older than he is, is madly in love with him but unable to act on her passion due to the possibly incestuous nature of any consummation of that love (I say possibly because it is strongly hinted that Fabrice’s real father is not Gina’s brother the Marquis del Dongo, but in fact a French officer from Napoleon’s army). Her formal lover, the Count Mosca della Rovere (or, at one point, Rovère), schemes with her to help Fabrice out of his undying love for Gina. And finally there is Clélia Conti, daughter of the general Fabio Conti, who oversees the prison of the Tower of Farnese (non-existent in reality) of the Principality of Parma.

Unlike Le Rouge et le Noir, the main hero is absent for long stretches of the story, and when he does finally choose one of the women as the object of his affection, he chooses the younger Clélia, which is not surprising given the context but which contrasts with Julien Sorel’s choice in Stendhal’s earlier novel.

The main theme of the novel seems to be that of love which cannot be acted on for one reason or another. Gina’s love for Fabrice is forbidden by society, Fabrice’s love for Clélia is forbidden by his clerical vows, his subsequent imprisonment (during which they can communicate through scraps of paper and signals at a distance) and finally by her vow to the Virgin never to look upon him again (and yet for all that, they still manage to end up having a child together), the Count’s love for Gina is hampered by her love for Fabrice, and so on. Interwoven into this main theme are side themes on the abuse of power, the intrigues of the court and the state of a society in transition from absolute monarchies to more representative forms of government.

I am glad that I recently read a history of Italy through this period (I am now reading about the Risorgimento), because Stendhal’s novel reinforces the actual historical realities that were shaping Italy at the time, even if he views them through a skewed lens of a Frenchman who believes the Italians to be more in love with his homeland and its famed Revolution than they in actuality were. The state of Parma as it exists in the book is actually modeled on Modena, where Francesco IV and his son Francesco V oppressed any republican (or “Jacobin”, as they preferred to term it) sentiment. Parma at the time was not ruled by Ranuce-Ernest IV and Ranuce-Ernest V, but by Marie-Louise, duchess of Parma, daughter of Emperor Franz I and Empress Maria Theresa of Austria and second wife of Napoleon. After Napoleon’s exile, she was given Parma by virtue of her high birth, and she was one of the most enlightened and mild of the rulers of Italy in that period, commuting sentences against revolutionaries and failing to look for those from other principalities who might be hiding in Parma.

The novel was like an onion that had been cut in several places. There are layers and layers to it, but yet each is incomplete in its own way. An air of mystery remains, but even so there is an odd sense that the mystery is completely superficial and hides little, if anything. It is curious in many ways, and certainly worth reading, and clearly more enjoyable than Le Rouge et le Noir. However, it will always remain a flawed jewel at best, hinting at much more that it could have been but which it never became. In that, it is much like its main characters.