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    The Red and the Black
    The Red and the Black
    The Red and the Black
    Audiobook20 hours

    The Red and the Black

    Written by Stendhal

    Narrated by Davina Porter

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Handsome and ambitious, Julien Sorel is determined to rise above his humble peasant origins and make something of his life-by adopting the code of hypocrisy by which his society operates. Julien ultimately commits a crime-out of passion, principle, or insanity-that will bring about his downfall. The Red and the Black is a lively, satirical picture of French Restoration society after Waterloo, riddled with corruption, greed, and ennui. The complex, sympathetic portrayal of Julien, the cold exploiter whose Machiavellian campaign is undercut by his own emotions, makes him Stendhal's most brilliant and human creation-and one of the greatest characters in European literature.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 11, 2008
    ISBN9781428197985

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    Reviews for The Red and the Black

    4/5

    24 ratings18 reviews

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    • 5/5
      It seems to be the time to write about the first big novel I have read this year...although I'm already 2 books ahead and otherwise I will loose track completely. As usual - and as I have read the book in German translation - I will write a short comprehension in english, but will discuss everything in German.Stendhal a.k.a. Henri Beyle put the scenery of "Rouge et Noir" in the time of about 1830, the Bourbone restauration in France, and subtitled it as a chronicle of the 19th century - which was still young at his time. But, it was supposed to be a novel taking place right now...and not in the past. Julien Sorell, the unusual intelligent son of a simple wood cutter - at least as being a designated priest he could speak Latin and had an enormous memory that he showed when citing entire parts of the bible by heart (and in Latin) - got the job of a house teacher in the family of the local Mayor M. de Renal. He seduces Mdme. Renal - not really out of love, but more because of his ego - and to avoid a scandal he is forced to leave. He joins the priest seminar - which by the way is one of the most impressive written parts of the book - and finally succeeds in becoming the private secretary of Marquis de la Mole. The Marquis' daugther soon got an eye on Julien and finally - this really takes Julien some time and and also sophisticated strategies - they plan to marry because she became pregnat (by him...). Of course the Marquis is rather dissappointed about this misalliance. Then, he receives a letter written by Mdme. de Renal in which she warnes the Marquis de la Mole about Julien being an imposter, whose only goal is to make carreer out of seducing women in the families where he is put in. Julien also reads the letter and for revenge shoots Mdme. de Renal while she is attending at church. Although she recovers, Julien gets voluntarily adjudged and executed......Die vorliegende neue deutsche Übersetzung von Stendhals Klassiker ""Rot und Schwarz" kann ich allen - egal ob Fan von französoscher Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts oder nicht - nur wärmstens ans Herz legen. Das Buch ist überaus spannend und unterhaltsam geschrieben. Stendhals mitunter kurze und prägnante Art verzichtet auf ausschweifende Schilderungen der Schauplätze ohne jedoch das jeweils für diese typische außer Acht zu lassen. Üppig, intensiv und wohlüberlegt ausgefallen sind alle Dialoge. Man durchlebt die Höhen und Tiefen von Julien Sorells Dasein - auch wenn man seine Gefühle, seinen Antrieb heute nicht immer recht verstehen kann. Die französische Revolution, Napoleons Kaiserreich und die anschließende Restauration - auf die eine weitere Revolution folgen sollte - prägen das gesellschaftliche Bild, das Stendhal zeichnet. Der Karrierist und bürgerliche Emporkömmling wird ebenso scharf charakterisiert wie der alteingesessene Adel, der ewige Streit zwischen Jesuiten und Jansenisten verfolgt die Handlung wie das gerade im Entstehen begriffene Genre des Stutzers und modebewußten Dandytums. Und natürlich die Frauen...alle scheinen sie in Julien verliebt. Angefangen von der unscheinbaren Kammerzofe, über Mdme. de Renal, einer Kaffeehausangestellten, einer verwittweten Generalin, bis hin zur Marquise de la Mode...alle weiß Julien von sich einzunehmen...und zu enttäuschen. Das Ende jedoch - laut Stendhal Bestandteil der dem Buch zugrundeliegenden wahren Begebenheit - bleibt mir rätselhaft. Wie bereits geschildert versucht Julien Mdme. de Renal in der Kirche zu ermorden und sieht danach, obwohl diese sich von ihren Verletzungen erholt und ihm vergibt, keinen anderen Ausweg, als sich dem Gericht zu überantworten und selbst auf seine Verurteilung zum Tode zu bestehen. Natürlich...nicht gerade ein 'Hollywood'-gerechtes Ende. Aber eindringlich und wirklich kurzweilig erzählt. Besonders hervorzuheben sind in dieser Ausgabe die vielen Zugaben. Neben einem ausführlichen Anhang mit Erklärungen und Anmerkungen Stendhals (die man im laufenden Text jeweils nachschlagen kann..) bietet die Ausgabe noch Entstehungs- und Wirkungsgeschichte, sowie Stendhals eigene Rezension des Werkes. Also: Lesebefehl!
    • 5/5
      If you think you understand love or if you couldn't get through Stendhal's essays on love, try this on for size.
    • 5/5
      Stendhal had the rare talent of making even the trivial and mundane vibrate with meaning. Cold-eyed brilliance and smouldering passion (though not without moments of wildfire), this novel. I need not wonder why the famous French historian Hippolyte Taine read it more than 20 times. This is a masterpiece beyond question.There are several (I counted at least six in print) English translations of this novel. I recommend comparing excerpts. Some of the translations seemed less than engaging.
    • 4/5
      I have been living in Grenoble (Stendhal's birth place) for more than thirty years, and I had never read anything by him. (I escaped reading Le Rouge et le Noir at school for an unknown reason.) So I decided that I should do something.The LT automaton had warned me that I would love this book (with a very high probability). The first volume, when Julien Sorel lives in Verrières, is rather solidly built. To me, the great mystery of this first volume is how Stendhal could make his hero so despicable and antipathetic.I was not so sure to meet the LT automaton prediction when I began the second volume : I got the impression to be lost by Stendhal, first in the midst of the atmosphere of a seminary, then in the multitude of characters met in balls and parties in the Parisian high society. It was as if Stendhal was trying to make money in selling pages. Luckily, the end of the novel has a more steady pace and ends romantically, but also in a rather grand guignol way.
    • 3/5
      I was with this classic novel for several weeks. It failed to hold my interest in many spots, but I decided to persevere through, since it had an unusual ending. The protagonist, Julien Sorel, is an intelligent, ambitious and unscrupulous son of a saw mill operator in the remote provinces of France. In the first book he is hired as a tutor to a prententious mayors children, and seduces the mayor's wife, finally running to the seminary. In the second book he is appointed as a personal secretary to a Marquis, and seduces the Marquis daughter. When it appears that he will succeed in marrying the daughter, and has been set up as a gentleman by the Marquis, a letter from the first love arrives accusing Julien. He trys to shoot his first love, and is condemned, but since she doesn't die both her and the daughter of the marquis defend him to the end. Stendhal has an unusually wry and sarcastic voice as he describes the boredom of the nobles and the striving of the bourgeoisie.
    • 3/5
      The story:This novel narrates the progress of a Julien Sorel, son to a carpenter, who is rather disenchanted with his family and is very ambitious of becoming a person of value. He progresses thanks to his prodigious memory which he uses first to memorize the bible in latin. This impresses the local church and is admitted to a seminary. This also helps him get a job with the local mayor, where he takes advantage of the mayor's wife, Madame de Rhenal, and becomes her lover. He moves from there to a seminary in Besancon but from then he is able to procure a job with the Marquis de la Mole in Paris. There he falls in love with the marquis' daughter who gets pregnant by him. The marquis, needless to say, is not very happy at the prospect of his daughter marrying this commoner, so he tries to buy him off to get Julien to leave France. Julien refuses and while this activities are going on, Madame de Rhenol at the instigation of a priest writes a letter to the marquis denunciating Julien as a scoundrel who left her. When the marquis shows Julien the letter, the latter becomes enraged, acquires a couple of pistols and goes back to Mathilde's town and shoots her in church. He is apprehended and taken to jail. A trial will take place but while in jail, both Mathilde and the Marquis' daughter come to see him. Mathilde, the marquis' daughter, is his wife since she's expecting his child. At this point, Julien realizes that he is really in love with Madame de Rhenal and despises Mathillde. At the trial, despite the efforts of his friends to buy the jury, Julien goes into a diatribe chastising the jury. So he is found guilty and a few days later faces the guillotine. Julien, like most of the other characters in the novel, is very self-centered and egotist. In fact heis almost a mysoginist- he despises nearly everybody, even those he claims to love. His affections for people are mostly ways to get gains for himself. A striking aspect of the novel is the rigidity of the classes in France at that time (and perhaps today too). The only hope for a person born in te low classes was that he'd be found to be the abandoned child of some nobleman- otherwise he is doomed to a life of poverty and privation. Class distinctions play a crucial role throughout the novel, being the impediment for Julien's progress. And perhaps the reason for his continuous resentment.
    • 4/5
      read the book for a class on the Euoperan novel. I am glad I did, there were some many good parts, reminded me especially the ending of campus the stranger. thought a lot about the idea of bad faith in reading the novel
    • 3/5
      I struggled my way through Stendhal's "The Red and the Black," which is one of those books that I can appreciate for being ahead of its time without thinking it was a particularly enjoyable read.The novel is the story of Julien Sorel, a romantic social climber who lives in Paris at a time where it's nearly impossible to get ahead if you weren't born into money and titles. He somehow convinces himself his avarice is actually the love he feels for various women (all wealthy with all the right connections.) He alternately loves these women and hates them for their position and frivolousness. I found the first half of the book just plain tedious...I was literally reading about five pages in a sitting before putting it down. However, the second half of the book moved from tolerable to interesting -- I'm not sure whether that was because the second half has decidedly more action and less of Julien's thoughts or because I got used to Stendhal's style.I'm glad I plowed through this book, rather than abandoning it, but it's not a book I really liked or got much out of either.
    • 5/5
      Obviously a great influence of Proust. Took almost a month to read- but very compelling none the less. Nothing very exciting happened- perhaps it was the main character's daring and extreme reactions to events. Espionage was introduced briefly. I wish there was more of that. The end was very fatalistic.
    • 3/5
      This book was not what I was expecting. The "Red" and "Black" are more of a setting and minor subplot to the real story, which is a romance (well, multiple romances). The main issue I have is that the tone was initially very light, humorous, even cute-- then it became ridiculously melodramatic-- and ultimately was tragic. I have to believe this was intentional and intended to reflect the outlook and maturation of the protagonist, Julien Sorel. Somehow, it just didn't work for me. It seemed disjointed, unbelievable, and made the characters seem false so it was difficult to rouse any empathy for their situations.There are still many aspects of the novel to be appreciated and even admired. Stendhal clearly had acute insight into the minds of young lovers (both male and female), and the ambitions of the not-yet-cynical or apathetic. The writing is certainly old-fashioned but easy to read, though my translation used and reused some obscure adjectives to death. I would recommend this book to anyone who makes a serious study of literature and wants to understand its influence on later writers. I also think it might be a good choice for an especially precocious teenager.
    • 4/5
      I was really surprised to like this book as much as I did. The main character, Julien, is so calculatingly ambitious and oversensitive that it is hard to really like him. And yet, this novel kept me engaged through witty writing and an ending I did not see coming.
    • 4/5
      1007 The Red and the Black, by Marie-Henri Beyle (De Stendahl) translated by C. K. Scott-Moncrief (read 10 May 1969) Sadly, my post-reading note on this book merely says I was somewhat impressed by it!
    • 3/5
      A book that as I read it wasnt sure what to make of it. Is it a treatise of love or a comment on the church? A priest with two mistresses, and no one is shocked, including the author. He becomes the cause celebe at the end.
    • 4/5
      Very enjoyable view of a romantic young social climber in post-Napoleonic France. I especially liked the way the satire rose with Julien's social surroundings. The historical footnotes were enormously helpful in placing the story in its context.
    • 3/5
      I think I read a bad translation of this book. The translation was from 1970, so I am hoping there are better ones out there now.Julien is a peasant in the early 1800s France. Napoleon is gone and the monarchy has been restored. Julien secretly idolizes Napoleon and despises the rich and the clergy.His father and brothers are carpenters, and he is weak and studious. They of course pick on him and slap him around, until one day Julien is asked to be a teacher for the children of a local family.Eventually he ends up at a monestery (I think) and then a secretary to a marquis. And then the downfall; and yes, it involves women!I had trouble liking the book until I got to the last 100 pages. I really think I would have liked it more if the translation had been more modern.
    • 4/5
      I should reread this one, since I read it in...French in Portugal, about 40 years ago. There just weren't all that many books in the small fishing village in which I was spending a lot of that summer, and I was desperate. I liked the book a lot, but I suspect I didn't get a lot of the nuances, given the state of my French (primitive) and my lack of a French/English dictionary to consult. But the memory of those long days, and the beautiful ocean, combine very pleasantly in my mind, drenched in a perpetual sunlight having nothing to do with the plot.
    • 4/5
      Post-Waterloo France is depicted with simple realism as the milieu of Stendhal's flawed hero in this masterly novel. This translation reflects the panache and directness of the original.
    • 5/5
      This is the story of Julien Sorel, a young man from the provinces of France who is inflamed with the passion of youth, a passion for the ideals of the Napoleonic age, but whose greatest passion is his ambition which takes him to the heights and sets in motion his tragic fall. Stendhal is able to present his narrative with unmatched, for his time, psychological depth and realism. The love affairs and political intrigues are spellbinding for the reader even today. This novel truly presents a "mirror" of reality and provides a challenge for the reader. The story presents a protagonist torn between his passion for the red of the cavalry dragoons and the black of the bishops of the church. Ultimately he finds hypocrisy on all sides and turns upon one of his loves while rejecting his only true friend. This is still an exciting, even exhilarating read and truly a great book for all time.