Stendhal en morceaux

The article explores the paradoxes of enunciation in the Castelfiorentino episode central to Stendhal's Rome, Naples et Florence. The author is caught between fragmentation (identification with the unhappy lover of the tale), disguise (the author as traveler and liar), anonymity (repeating another storyteller's tale: meaning of the intertext, the Decameron and the Arabian Nights), and pseudonym (analogies between the tale and the name "Stendhal"). The reader's status is problematic: the text, reticent and unfinished, borders on the illegible. It can be read as "squiggles" (Barthes: Stendhal's Italian journey as a pre-literary lover's discourse, a stylistic failure to express the love of Italy) or as inécriture (Genette: Stendhal's "graphomania" as a literary strategy). Its meaning remains ambiguous: an emblem of literary creation itself, intermediary between life and art. (In French) (DJ)