The Red and the Black

Le Rouge et le Noir (; meaning The Red and the Black) is a psychological novel in two volumes by Stendhal, published in 1830. It chronicles the attempts of a provincial young man to rise socially beyond his modest upbringing through a combination of talent, hard work, deception, and hypocrisy. He ultimately allows his passions to betray him.

The novel's full title, Le Rouge et le Noir: Chronique du XIX<sup>e</sup> siècle (The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the 19th Century), indicates its twofold literary purpose as both a psychological portrait of the romantic protagonist, Julien Sorel, and an analytic, sociological satire of the French social order under the Bourbon Restoration (1814–1830). In English, Le Rouge et le Noir variously is translated as Red and Black, Scarlet and Black, and The Red and the Black, without the subtitle.

The title is taken to refer to the tension between the clerical and secular interests of the protagonist, represented by each of the title colors, but it could also refer to the casino card game "rouge et noir", with the card game being the narratological leitmotiv of a novel in which chance and luck determine the fate of the main character. There are other interpretations as well.

Background

Le Rouge et le Noir is the Bildungsroman of Julien Sorel, the intelligent and ambitious protagonist. He comes from a poor family

Plot

In two volumes, The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the 19th Century tells the story of Julien Sorel's life in France's rigid social structure restored after the disruptions of the French Revolution and the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Book I

Julien Sorel, the ambitious son of a carpenter in the fictional village of Verrières, in Franche-Comté, France, would rather read and daydream about the glorious victories of Napoleon's long-disbanded army than work in his father's timber business with his brothers, who beat him for his intellectual pretensions.

Stendhal repeatedly questions the possibility and the desirability of "sincerity" because most of the characters, especially Julien Sorel, are acutely aware of having to play a role to gain social approval. In that 19th-century context, the word "hypocrisy" denoted the affectation of high religious sentiment; in The Red and the Black it connotes the contradiction between thinking and feeling.

In Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque (Deceit, Desire and the Novel, 1961), philosopher and critic René Girard identifies in Le Rouge et le Noir the triangular structure he denominates as "mimetic desire"; that is, one desires a person only when he or she is desired by someone else. Girard's proposition is that a person's desire for another always is mediated by a third party. This triangulation thus accounts for the perversity of the Mathilde–Julien relationship, which is most evident when Julien begins courting the widow Mme de Fervaques to pique Mathilde's jealousy, and it accounts for Julien's fascination with and membership in the high society he simultaneously desires and despises. To help achieve a literary effect, Stendhal wrote most of the epigraphs—literary, poetic, historic quotations—that he attributed to others.

Literary and critical significance

André Gide stated that The Red and the Black was a novel ahead of its time, that it was a novel for readers in the 20th century. In Stendhal's time, prose novels included dialogue and descriptions from omniscient narrator; Stendhal's great contribution to literary technique was the describing of the psychologies (emotions, thoughts, and interior monologues) of the characters. As a result, he is considered the creator of the psychological novel.

In Jean-Paul Sartre's play Les Mains sales (1948), the protagonist Hugo Barine suggests pseudonyms for himself, including Julien Sorel, whom he resembles.

In the afterword to her novel them, Joyce Carol Oates wrote that she had titled the manuscript Love and Money as a nod to classic 19th-century novels, among them The Red and the Black, "whose class-conscious hero Julien Sorel is less idealistic, greedier, and crueler than Jules Wendall but is clearly his spiritual kinsman."

A passage describing Julien Sorel's sexual indifference is deployed as the epigraph to Paul Schrader's screenplay of American Gigolo, whose protagonist is named Julien: "The idea of a duty to be performed, and the fear of making himself ridiculous if he failed to perform it, immediately removed all pleasure from his heart."

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore named The Red and the Black as his favorite book. It is also one of the books in Emmanuel Macron's official portrait.

Translations

Le Rouge et le Noir, Chronique du XIX<sup>e</sup> siècle (1830) first was translated into English ca. 1900; the best-known translation, The Red and the Black (1926) by C. K. Scott Moncrieff, has been, like his other translations, characterised as one of his "fine, spirited renderings, not entirely accurate on minor points of meaning...Scott Moncrieff's versions have not really been superseded." The version by Robert M. Adams for the Norton Critical Editions series is highly regarded; it "is more colloquial; his edition includes an informative section on backgrounds and sources, and excerpts from critical studies." Other translators include Margaret R. B. Shaw (as Scarlet and Black for Penguin Classics, 1953), Lowell Blair (Bantam Books, 1959), Lloyd C. Parks (New York, 1970), Catherine Slater (Oxford World's Classics, 1991), Roger Gard (Penguin Classics, 2002), and Raymond N. MacKenzie (University of Minnesota Press, 2022).

The 2006 translation by Burton Raffel for the Modern Library edition generally earned positive reviews, and Salon.com stated "[Burton Raffel's] exciting new translation of The Red and the Black blasts Stendhal into the twenty-first century." Michael Johnson for The New York Times wrote "Now The Red and the Black is getting a new lease on life with an updated English-language version by the renowned translator Burton Raffel. His version has all but replaced the decorous text produced in the 1920s by the Scottish-born writer-translator C.K. Scott-Moncrieff".

Burned in 1964 Brazil

Following the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état, General , commander of the Third Army, ordered, in Rio Grande do Sul, the burning of all "subversive books". Among the books he branded as subversive was The Red and the Black.

Adaptations

Film

Der geheime Kurier (The Secret Courier) is a silent 1928 German film by Gennaro Righelli, featuring Ivan Mosjoukine, Lil Dagover, and Valeria Blanka.
Il Corriere del re (The Courier of the King) is a 1947 Italian film adaptation of the story directed by Gennaro Righelli. It features Rossano Brazzi, Valentina Cortese, and Irasema Dilián.
Another film adaptation of the novel was released in 1954, directed by Claude Autant-Lara. It stars Gérard Philipe, Antonella Lualdi, and Danielle Darrieux. It won the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics award for the best film of the year.
' is a 1961 French TV film directed by Pierre Cardinal, with Robert Etcheverry, Micheline Presle, Marie Laforêt, and Jean-Roger Caussimon.
A BBC TV miniseries in five episodes, The Scarlet and the Black, was made in 1965, starring John Stride, June Tobin, and Karin Fernald. It is unknown if the serial still exists as it has not been seen or documented in decades.
Красное и чёрное (Krasnoe i čërnoe) (Red and Black) is a 1976 Soviet film version, directed by Sergei Gerasimov, with Nikolai Yeryomenko Ml, Natalya Bondarchuk, and Natalya Belokhvostikova.
Another BBC TV miniseries titled Scarlet and Black was broadcast in 1993, starring Ewan McGregor, Rachel Weisz, and Stratford Johns as the Abbé Pirard. A notable addition to the plot was the spirit of Napoleon (Christopher Fulford), who advises Sorel (McGregor) through his rise and fall.
A TV film of the novel titled ' was broadcast in 1997 by Koch Lorber Films, starring Kim Rossi Stuart, Carole Bouquet, and Judith Godrèche; it was directed by . This version is available on DVD.

Theater

A Japanese musical The Red and the Black (赤と黒). The first adaptation by Kazuo Kikuta was produced by all-female theater troupe Takarazuka Revue in 1957 and starred Hanayo Sumi, Kaoru Yodo, and Yachiyo Ootori. Since then it has been performed in 1975, 1989, 2008 and 2020.

A French musical ', produced by Albert Cohen and directed by François Chouquet and Laurent Seroussi; it starred , Haylen and Yoann Launay among others. After its premier in 2016, the show went on a tour in China. It was also performed by Takarazuka Revue in 2023 and was staged in Tokyo Metropolitan Theater in 2023 and Umeda Arts Theater in 2024.