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New York. 1950. New Directions. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. Translated from the French by Louise Varese. 415 pages. hardcover. Cover art by Alvin Lustig & Connor. keywords: Europe France Literature Translated 19th Century World Literature. DESCRIPTION - POLITICAL INTRIGUE is always a fascinating subject for fiction. In the hands of a great master like Stendhal it can become utterly absorbing. And so it is in this novel, where we follow the adventures of young Lucien Leuwen, private secretary to the Minister of the Interior in the corrupt French government of Louis-Philippe. Our hero, son of a rich Parisian banker and wit, a blameless young man of embarrassingly high principles, has left his Army post in Nancy because of an unhappy love affair. Through his father's connections, a post is secured in the Ministry, and Lucien's eyes are dramatically opened to the realities' of French political life. He learns that his chief, the Minister, regularly plays the stock market with political tips. (The book takes its title - THE TELEGRAPH - from the fact that the French telegraph system - the original, visual semaphore type - is controlled by the government, so that information reaches the Ministers before it reaches the newspapers.) The Minister gambles, but so does his master the King! One of Lucien's first tasks is to suppress the scandal arising from a political murder. He handles this delicate affair so adroitly - though thoroughly disgusted by such shameless doings - that he is sent to the provinces to fix' an election. His career reaches a climax when his father begins to dabble in politics himself, is elected a Deputy, forms a successful cabal, and pushes his son, for political reasons, into a cold-blooded love affair with the most beautiful hostess in Paris. Such are the colorful threads in Stendhal's tapestry. But the background is equally rich - an incomparable historical portrait of an age and its ways. And it is less remote from us than might appear. The political climate of Louis-Philippe's reign, when an unpopular government was keeping itself in power by force and by trickery, has many points of comparison with the France of post-World-War-Il. And the American reader may even recognize certain similarities - plus ça change, plus c'est la mEme chose - with our own frenetic Washington. In France, Stendhal's third great masterpiece, LUCIEN LEUWEN, of which this is the second volume, is as well known and as much read as THE RED AND THE BLACK and THE CHARTERHOUSE OF PARMA. American readers will be deeply grateful to Louise Varèse who has given them this magnificent translation, the first to be done in English of this important work. Stendhal never put the finishing touches on this book - he realized that he dare not publish it during his lifetime because of its outspoken revelations of political corruption - but we can be sure that it was one of his favorites from the amount of characteristic wit and irony which he lavished upon it. Mrs. Varèse, whose translation is outstanding both for its fidelity and its vivacity, has contributed a valuable introduction and copious historical notes. inventory #31977.
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