STENDHAL, Henri Beyle, dit.

Lot 1232
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STENDHAL, Henri Beyle, dit.
Of Love. Paris, printed by Fain for P. Monge, 1822. 2 volumes in-12 (176 x 108 mm) of 2 ff.n.ch., III, 232 pp. for volume I; 2 ff.n.ch., 328 pp. for volume II; 2 ff.n.ch., 328 pp. for volume III; 2 ff.n.ch., 328 pp. for volume IV, 1 table f.n.ch., a sheet of printed title pieces glued to the counterplate; brooch, blue mute cover, printed title pieces, folder with richly gilded case with the sign 'Gruel'. First edition of this text written when the author was living a great passion with Mathilde Dembowski in Italy. ? In this book, Stendhal uses the now famous image of 'crystallization' to describe the birth and formation of love: if you put a dry branch in a salt mine at Salzburg, when you take it out, it is so full of crystals and transformed into its primitive appearance that it is hard to recognize it. The same is true of love: in its purest essence, love is made up of imagination and desire, and creates in the heart of man an idealization that is part of life itself... It appears, therefore, that this work, far from containing the terms of a scientific study, is particularly revealing of the writer's sentimental attitude; he shows himself fervently devoted to love conceived as a pure feeling belonging to the realm of dreams, beyond all baseness and ambiguity - as well as testifying to the behaviour of the heroes of his novels? (Laffont-Bompiani). Nice copy in all margins; the brochure and the title pieces are not period. Provenance: Aime Laurent (ex-libris) - Collection of a Parisian amateur (sale of his library, Paris, 25.06.2009, lot 142). Clouzot, 150 ("Très rare et recherché"); Carteret Romantique, II, 346.
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