STENDHAL Henri Beyle dit (1783-1842).
Autograph piece, (s.l.n.d.) 1840. 3 pp. gd in-4. Watermarked Italian vellum, the "Feliciano Innamorati". Presence of wetness at the top of both pages, the ink has diffused slightly at this location. Transcript attached.
Unpublished autograph draft of the first scene of a play entitled "La Mandragore". Stendhal was French consul in Civitavecchia, in the Roman States, when he wrote this text. It is most likely a pastiche (unfinished?) of La Mandragore (La Mandragola), a comedy in five acts by Nicolas Machiavelli. In fact, in Stendhal's autograph notes written on three covers of the Literary Pantheon, on April 8, 1840, that is to say, on the very day he wrote his draft: "Lu la Mandragore "1.
On reading the scene proposed by Stendhal, it becomes clear that his play differs from the comedy of the Italian writer. In the latter, Callimaco, in love with the beautiful Lucrezia, succeeds in seducing her by abusing the credulity of her husband Nicia. Stendhal, as for him, makes the seduction of the virtuous Nicia the object of a bet of Callimachus.
"Callimachus: Stay, Siro.
Siro: Ha! and for a month you never want to speak to me, if I try to pull you out of your melancholy for a moment, you send me away.
Callimachus: Well, you are an honest boy, since 10 years that you are mine I found you faithful, finally I treated you as a friend. I like you for your spirit2, and you believe yourself perhaps even more than there is let us see why I left Paris? [Siro:] I often dreamed of it, you led such a happy life there. What good wine was served at your table! How you regaled all the Florentines of distinction that their business brought in this Paris! 1Autograph notes (April 8-27, 1840) sold on May 27, 2005 at Beaussant-Lefèvre (lot n°61) and acquired by the Grenoble municipal library (Fonds Stendhal). Stendhal could have read Machiavelli's comedy in the translation proposed in the Théâtre européen: nouvelle collection des chefs d'œuvre des théâtres allemand, anglais, espagnol, danois, français, hollandais, italien, polonais, russe, suédois, etc. (Théâtre italien. Première série. (Théâtre italien. Première série. Tome I Paris : Guérin, 1835, p91-126), which begins with the same words by Callimaque and which presents certain similarities with Stendhal's version.
2 Interlinear variant : not lacking in spirit
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