Italian Chronicles

Stendhal was just one of several pseudonyms used by Henri Beyle, a French writer born on January 23, 1783, in Grenoble. Having been orphaned of his mother at the age of seven, Henri left for Paris in 1799 on the pretext of enrolling in the École Polytechnique but, deep down, his real intention was to escape his father's discipline to become a famous playwright. It would be, however, for his novels that Stendhal would become known.
Three years later, after a stint in Napoleon's army that had taken him to Italy, Stendhal found himself back in Paris, involved in several literary projects that would never be completed. At that time, his great ambition was to become a new Molière.
In 1806, Henri Beyle was appointed deputy military commissar in the German city of Brunswick, which marked the beginning of a career that allowed him to get to know Germany, Austria and Russia.
With the fall of the French Empire in 1814, Henri decided to settle in Milan. This move to Italy corresponds to the affirmation of Stendhal's literary career. His political friendships in Milan were not well regarded by the Austrian occupying forces, and the writer returned to Paris in 1821. Until 1830, Stendhal's life in Paris was marked by intense social and intellectual activity. The appearance of his "Racine et Shakespeare" in 1823 is considered one of the first manifestos of Romanticism in France.
With the constitutional monarchy of Louis-Philippe, the result of the July Revolution of 1830, Henri was appointed consul in the port of Civitavecchia, in the Papal States. Isolated and far from the intense Parisian life, Stendhal encountered many obstacles to his writing, so he devoted his time to autobiographical narratives. In this last phase of his life, Stendhal produced some of the most important titles of his work. When he died on March 23, 1842, Stendhal was on leave in Paris. He left us magnificent works such as "The Red and the Black" and "The Charterhouse of Parma" and a series of fabulous short stories.