Two Hundred Years of Stendhal

Two hundred years ago, Stendhal was born. Well, sort of. By 1822, Henri Beyle, the man we now know as Stendhal, was balding, fat, and pushing 50. Even the nom-de-plume was not born then. He had invented it a few years earlier by plagiarizing and misspelling—two Stendhalian trademarks—the name of a German town, Stendal, he had passed through as a 20-something officer in Napoleon’s army. Why Beyle settled on Stendhal is not clear. It was just one among the 200 or so pseudonyms he slipped in and out of during his writing life, ranging from Anastase de Serpière and Baron Pataut to Old Hummus and William Crocodile.