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Stendhal's Count Mosca as a Statesman
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Count mosca has received sharply differing interpretations from two distinguished French novelists of the nineteenth century. In 1840, one year after the publication of Stendhal's La Chartreuse de Parme, Balzac wrote: “M. Beyle a tant exalté le sublime caractère du premier ministre de Parme, qu'il est douteux que le Prince de Metternich soit aussi grand que Mosca. … Tout ce que Metternich a fait dans sa longue carrière, n'est pas plus extraordinaire que ce que vous voyez faire à Mosca. … L'étonnante et fine supériorité de Mosca n'est jamais en défaut, ni en action, ni en paroles.”
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1965
References
1 The article appeared first in La Rovue Parisienne of 25 September 1840. Quotations are taken from Stendhal (Henry Beyle), La Chartreuse de Parme (Paris: J. Hetzel, 1846), pp. 487, 488, 495.
2 Emile Zola, “Les Romanciers naturalistes,” in Œuvres complètes (Paris, 1928), xxxvii, 95.
3 Stendhal romancier (Paris, 1947), p. 413.
4 “En lisant La Chartreuse,” Revue de Paris, March 1950, pp. 43–44.
5 Stendhal, Romans et nouvelles, ed. Henri Martineau (Paris: [Bibliothèque de la Pléiade], 1952), ii, 1401.
6 Politics and the Novel (New York, 1957), pp. 41–42. Even if Mosca may have Machiavellian ideas, his statesmanship must be measured in terms of the results he achieves.
7 For example Matthew Josephson, Stendhal or The Pursuit of Happiness (New York, 1946), p. 436, where it is claimed that “problems of the utmost complexity are met and solved with infinite finesse by Mosca.”
8 Since this important character bears several names, I shall refer to her as “Gina” before her arrival at the court of Parma, and as “the Duchess” thereafter.
9 This and future page references are taken from La Chartreuse de Parme in Stendhal, Romans et nouvelles (Paris: [Bibliothèque de la Pléiade], 1952), Vol. ii.
10 In Stendhal (Henry Beyle), La Chartreuse de Parme (above, n. 1), p. 500.
11 This wavering attitude by the Duchess towards Mosca may suggest a new possible model for Mosca in addition to those previously proposed (especially Metternich, Count Saurau, and Guillaume-Louis Dutillot, pp. 1400–01). Count Molé, about whom Stendhal expressed similar judgments. On the one hand, we find derogatory remarks: “Mille et mille nouvelles raisons de croire que tous les hommes à réputation en administration sont des niais sans force et sans suite, comme le comte Molé” (Journal, entry dated “Mardi, 18 décembre [1810]); or again: ”Mais le Molé est trop sot“ (Letter to Mareste, dated 11 décembre 1818). On the other hand, as minister of foreign affairs, Count Molé had been very generous to the consul at Civita-Vecchia, and in 1839, when Molé resigned, Stendhal offered him a statue of Tiberius. For an account of relations between Stendhal and his superiors, see François Michel, ”Deux ministres et un consul: le comte Molé, le duc de Broglie et Stendhal,“ in Etudes stendhaliennes (Paris, 1958), pp. 128–175.
12 This is how Mosca explains his intentions: “Si Conti use d'indulgence envers ses prisonniers, … on le disgracie comme un jacobin auquel ses idées politiques font oublier ses devoirs de général; s'il se montre sévère et impitoyable … il cesse d'être le chef de son propre parti, et s'aliène toutes les familles qui ont un des leurs à la citadelle” (p. 138).
13 On this point two additional admirers of Mosca do not entirely agree. Robert M. Adams, Stendhal: Notes on a Novelist (New York, 1959), p. 140, speaks of Mosca's “readiness to sacrifice lives, not for a noble cause but for an ignoble necessity”; while F. C. Green, Stendhal (Cambridge, England, 1939), p. 295, maintains that “Mosca … prefers diplomacy to murder. … Stendhal infers that Mosca, with all his talents, just misses being a completely successful politician because of such scruples.”
14 Philip Stephen, “Count Mosca's Role in La Chartreuse de Parme,” L'Esprit Créateur, ii (Spring 1962), 42, fails to take this into account when he states: “The brilliant and scheming Duchess rapidly acquires some of the Count's sapience … but she is less qualified than he: first, she must be initiated to the rules of the game, then she becomes too involved with the fate of Fabrice and the Count to view the situation with the latter's amused scorn.”
15 As does, among others, Bardèche, op. cit., pp. 384 ff.
16 Cf. Pierre Martino, Stendhal (Paris, 1914), p. 261.
17 The only apparently spontaneous action of Mosca is his defense of Ernest IV's statue, but this too is rationally explained by him (p. 413).
18 Gina certainly loved Pietranera more unreservedly than Mosca who, despite her repeated declarations that he is “parfaitement aimable” (p. 466), remains rather the best man available. In one passage she associates Fabrice and her first husband: “Non, se dit-elle enfin, voici une preuve décisive: il [Fabrice] est comme le pauvre Pietranera, il a toujours des armes dans toutes ses poches, et ce jour-là, il ne portait qu'un mauvais fusil à un coup, et encore, emprunté à l'un des ouvriers” (p. 287).
19 It is significant that Mosca advises Fabrice: “De tous temps les vils Sancho Pança l'emporteront à la longue sur les sublimes don Quichotte” (p. 186).
20 A completely different view is expressed by Martin Turnell, The Novel in France (New York: Vintage Books, 1958), p. 196, where he asserts that “it is only by studying the tone of almost every sentence in the first chapter that we see how the book as a whole must be read,” and that “Napoleon's irruption into Italy is nevertheless the first episode of what is essentially a great comic novel.”