THE FAILURE OF FORM:

THE UNINTELLIGIBILITY OF THE PHENOMENON OF LOVE IN STENDHAL’S ON LOVE (1822)

Abstract

The article examines how the French writer Henri Beyle, better known by his pseudonym Stendhal, addresses the limits to understanding the phenomenon of love, as well as the challenges of constructing a discourse on the passion of love in On Love (1822) — limits and difficulties acknowledged after the author's experience of a romantic disappointment. Attempting to employ the procedure and discursive form of the philosophical-scientific movement to which he claims allegiance — namely, Destutt de Tracy's ideology — to make sense of the amorous experience he lived, Stendhal ultimately deems them inadequate to deal with the complexity of the phenomenon. The aim is to show how, despite recognizing the limitations of his own book, Stendhal in On Love highlights the insufficiencies of conventional forms of discussing love in his time, exploring, albeit inadequately, alternative narrative techniques. The formal limits will be presented not only as discursive limitations but primarily as philosophical inadequacies.