¹ Although “Le Rideau cramoisi” was probably composed before 1867, as Jacques Petit suggests, a more precise date has not been established—Jacques Petit, ed., Barbey d'Aurevilfy: CEuvres romanesques completes, 2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1964, 1966), ii, 1280, 1288, 1300. (All further references to this edition will be found in the text, cited by volume and page. References to Petit will be preceded by his name, those to Barbey by B.d'A.) I would suggest that the first version probably predated Un Pretre marie (1864) and Le Chevalier des Touches (1864) by a good deal, perhaps by as much as ten years. Both Un Pretre marie and Le Chevalier des Touches show a command of his characters' idiom which also appears at the end of “Le Rideau cramoisi” and is notably absent in Brassard's description of his feelings while holding Alberte's hand (B.d'A., ii, 33–34). As I shall attempt to demonstrate below, the older Brassard, a dandy par excellence, was the master of any situation and certainly articulate. Therefore, the unevocative cliches Brassard uses in the hand-holding passage are out of character. Perhaps, then, it is not too unreasonable to suggest that Barbey first composed “Le Rideau cramoisi” in the 1850's when he was led to write two articles concerned with Stendhal.

² Les Figures du discours (1821–30; rpt. Paris': Flam-marion, 1968), p. 125. He also makes an important distinction between allusion and allegory, the former being metaphorical and the latter not (pp. 114–18). Perhaps it would also be useful to distinguish between allusion and plagiarism. The latter consists of equal, nonmetaphorical terms and, when successful, the text in hand does not suggest a source. To the contrary, successful allusion must suggest something else. For more recent discussions of allusion, see, e.g., Bernard Weinberg, “Foreword,” French Poetry of the Renaissance (Carbondale, 111.: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1954), p. xxi; Gerard Genette, Figures n: Essais (Paris: Seuil, 1969), pp. 272–81; Leo Hickey, “El Valor de la alusion en literatura,” Revista de Occidente, No. 88 (July 1970), pp. 49–60.

I should also like to acknowledge my debt for the stimulation provided by Enrico de'Negri's fine article: “The Legendary Style of the Decameron” RR, 43 (1952), 166–89. After having established the two terms of Boccaccio's allusion to the Book of Job in the tale of Griselda (10th tale of the 10th day), he concludes by drawing attention to a further problem: “The analogy is evident. It remains to be seen which extension Boccaccio may have attributed to it, which symbol he may have assigned to his last legend.” The present article is an attempt to provide a framework which will facilitate the resolution of such problems.

³ Stendhal, Le Rouge et le noir, ed. Henri Martineau (Paris: Gamier, 1960), pp. 278–79. Further references will be found in the text, preceded by the notation, Rouge.

⁴ Hippolyte Taine, “Stendhal (Henri Beyle),” Nouveaux essais de critique et d'histoire (1864; rpt. Paris: Hachette, 1905), p. 233.

⁵ “Stendhal,” Les Sensations d'un jure (Paris: A. Lemerre, 1875), p. 121. For the summary in this paragraph, the following sources have been particularly helpful: the article by Babou, pp. 87–136; Adolphe Paupe, Histoire des ceuvres de Stendhal (Paris: Dujarric, 1903), esp. pp. 75–103;C.-A. Sainte-Beuve, “M. de Stendhal: Ses CEuvres completes” Causeries du lundi, 9^e serie, 3^e ed. (Paris: Gamier, 1869), pp. 301–41; Jacques Petit's edition of Barbey d'Aurevilly: Le XIX“ siicle: Des osuvres et des hom-mes, 2 vols. (Paris: Mercure de France, 1964,1966), i, 110–23, which includes portions of the following: Barbey's ”Stendhal et Balzac,“ Romanciers d'hier et d'avant-hier (1853; rpt. Paris: A. Lemerre, 1904), pp. 1–16; his ”De Stendhal,“ Litterature epistolaire (1856; rpt. Paris: A. Lemerre, 1893), pp. 31–49; his ”Prosper Merimee“ (1874) and his ”X. Doudan“ (1876), Litterature epistolaire, pp. 211–25 and pp. 291–304, respectively; Prosper MeYimee, ”Notes et souvenirs“ (1855), Stendhal: Correspondance inidite (Paris: Calmann Levy, 1907), i, v–xxiv; Paul Bourget, ”Stendhal (Henri Beyle),“ Essais de psychologie contemporaine, 8^e ed. (1883; rpt. Paris: A. Lemerre, 1892), pp. 251–323, and his later (1923) ”L'Art du roman chez Stendhal,“ Quelques limoignages (Paris: Plon, 1928), pp. 41–55; Taine's ”Stendhal (Henri Beyle),“ Nouveaux essais, pp. 223–57; E.-M. de Vogue, ”De la litterature realiste: A propos du roman russe,“ RDM, 3^C periode, 75 (15 mai 1886), 298; Emile Zola, ”Stendhal“ (1880), Les Romanciers naturalistes (Paris: Fasquelle, 1906), pp. 75–124.

⁶ L'Evenement (l^er mai 1882), quoted from Paupe, pp. 88–89.

⁷ “Stendhal,” p. 123. Zola attacks, not Stendhal, but his followers: “Avec ces dangereux disciples, tout passant devient un homme immense, le sublime court les rues. lis ne peuvent causer dix minutes avec n'importe qui, sans faire du Balzac et surtout du Stendhal, cherchant sous les mots, manipulant les cervelles, decouvrant des abimes. Ce n'est point ici de la fantaisie; je connais des gargons fort intelligents qui comprennent de la sorte les maitres du naturalisme moderne. Eh bien! je declare tout net qu'ils sont dans le cauchemar” (pp. 123–24).

⁸ Pierre Brun, Henry Beyle—Stendhal (Grenoble: A. Gratier, 1900), p. 59.

⁹ The Gates of Horn: A Study of Five French Realists (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963), p. 128.

¹⁰ See, e.g., the dedication to Marthe Brandes:

Si vous les ensorcelez tous,

Sorciere, soyez-leur cruelle . . .

Mais vous, Mademoiselle, vous!

Qu'aucun d'eux ne vous ensorcelle!

(B.d'A., ii, 1599–1600)

¹¹ CEuvres, II, Bibliotheque de la Plfiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), p. 676.

¹² “Les Transformations des contes fantastiques,” in Thiorie de la litterature, trans. Tzvetan Todorov (Paris: Seuil, 1966), esp. p. 248.

¹³ See, e.g., L'Ensorcelee and another of the stories in Les Diaboliques, “A un diner d'athees.”

¹⁴ Jacques Petit asks, “Serait-ce pousser trop loin que de voir un rappel de cette image [du sang] dans 'la fascinante lumiere' du 'rideau cramoisi' dans 'ce carre vide, rouge et lumineux' ” —“LTmagination de la mort,” RLM, Nos. 189–92 (1968), p. 82. A stendhalien would immediately make this association, for, as is widely recognized—e.g., H. Martineau, Rouge, n. 36; E. B. O. Borgerhoff, “The Anagram in Le Rouge et le noir,” MLN, 68 (1953), 383; Andre Le Breton, Le Rouge et le noir de Stendhal: Etude et analyse (Paris: Mellottfe, 1934), pp. 236–37—Stendhalclearly associated blood with the curtains: “En sortant, Julien crut voir du sang pres du benitier, c'etait de l'eau benite qu'on avait repandue: le reflet des rideaux rouges qui couvraient les fenetres la faisait paraitre du sang” (Rouge, p. 25).

¹⁵ Borgerhoff, “Anagram,” pp. 383–86; S. de Sacy, “Le Miroir sur la grande route,” Mercure de France, 306 (1949), 74–76; F. W. J. Hemmings, Stendhal: A Study of His Novels (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), pp. 124–25.

¹⁶ Stendhal et le beylisme (Paris: P. Ollendorff, 1914), pp. 129–41. For others of similar persuasion, see, e.g., Albert Thibaudet, Stendhal (Paris: Hachette, 1931), pp. 120–22; or, more recently, Hemmings, Stendhal, pp. 117–19; his “Stendhal relu par Zola au temps de ‘l'Affaire’ (documents inedits),” Stendhal Club, 4° annee (1962), pp. 305–06; and Grahame C. Jones, L'Ironie dans les romans de Stendhal (Lausanne: Grand Chene, 1966), pp. 52–58.

¹⁷ The conclusion is Jacques Petit's (II, 1302) and is simply unacceptable.

¹⁸ The well-established theme of the devil incarnate as woman (see n. 31) may also encourage the reader to see Alberte as a diabolique. In this case, Barbey's allusion would resemble the technique I have elsewhere called “allusive complex” (see n. 21). It is also possible, as Mark Suino has suggested to me, that the crimson of the curtains acts in the manner of what a Russian Formalist would term a “minus device.” If so, the color, which normally represents life, blood, passion, etc. automatically suggests its symbolic opposite—black. Death and the dark forces would then be conjured up, and Le Rouge et le noir as well. Some consideration should be given to this suggestion, for the story turns around “une realite' cachee,” as Marcel Proust has pointed out in A la recherche du temps perdu, Biblio-theque de la Pldiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), iii, 375, whether it be the banal silhouette which makes Brassard shiver, the acceptable front Alberte and Brassard display above the table while beneath there is hand-play, or, finally, Alberte herself, the reality whose opposite is suggested but not explained.

¹⁹ Rogers makes the very interesting suggestion that Lea alludes to the Sleeping Beauty legend (Novels, pp. 36–37).

²⁰ See also, A. H. Pasco and Wilfrid J. Rollman, “The Artistry of Gide's Onomastics,” MLN, 86 (1971), 523–31. In a similar vein, the fact that Barbey's “Albertine” represents a fatal woman must have been a positive factor in Proust's choice of the name for his heroine. Proust, as noted below (n. 18), knew the story. Paolo Cherchi's considerations on Voltaire's use of names within the larger perspective of a parody of Genesis in Candide provides another example: “Alcune note per un commento al Candide,” ZFSL, 78 (Feb. 1968), 44–53.

²¹ I have studied this kind of allusion in “Marcel, Albertine and Balbec in Proust's Allusive Complex,” RR, 62(1971), 113–26.

²² E.g., Gide's Thesie, Giraudoux's Electre, Anouilh's Antigone. For other examples, see E. Ludovicy, “Le Mythe grec dans le theatre francais contemporain,” RLV, 22(1956), 387–418.

²³ Zola's use of Phedre, already mentioned, could be cited as one example of allusion highlighting difference, though not opposition. It emphasizes the pathetic sordidness of Renee and Maxime, by pointing out that mythic characters were great even in their crimes. Another example is to be found below in n. 36.

²⁴ Henri Morier, Dictionnaire de poetique et de rhetorique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1961), pp. 4–15, suggests, for instance, “l'allusion de circonstance,” “l'allu-sion de transfert,” “l'allusion formelle,” “l'allusion symbolique.”

²⁵ E.g., Boris Vian's allusion to the Isis myth in L'Ecume des jours. For an example of historical, current, and mythic allusions working in conjunction in the same work, see the excellent study on Malherbe's odes by David Lee Rubin: Higher, Hidden Order: Design and Meaning in the Odes of Malherbe, UNCSRLL, No. 117 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1972).

Fontanier, Figures, pp. 125–26, would add to historical and mythical allusions, “allusion morale,” by which he means reference to social customs or opinions.

²⁶ Barbey d'Aurevilly (Paris: R. Laffont, 1945), p. 413.

²⁷ Les Diaboliques de Barbey d'Aurevilly (Paris: Edgar Malfere, 1939), p. 83.

²⁸ Brantome, Les Dames galantes (Paris: Gamier, 1960), p. 71. For similar adventures, see the story of the mortal risks run by Captain Beaulieu while enjoying the two daughters of the man holding him prisoner (pp. 101–02). For other such stories, though without excessive danger, see pp. 145–50.

²⁹ Although Brassard is not attracted to dead bodies, I think the fact that he has intercourse with one, however accidentally, justifies the use of this term in reference to “Le Rideau.”

³⁰ E.g., A. C. Lee, The Decameron: Its Sources and Analogues (London: David Nutt, 1909), pp. 231, 257, 294.

³¹ The Romantic Agony (New York: Meridian, 1956), esp. pp. 189–286.

³² In Contes fantastiques de E. T. A. Hoffmann, trans. Loeve-Veimars, iv (Paris: E. Renduel, 1830), 1–146.

³³ B. G. Rogers, The Novels and Stories of Barbey d'Aurevilly (Geneva: Droz, 1967), p. 109.

³⁴ Jean Plattard, L'OZuvre de Rabelais (Sources, invention el composition) (Paris: H. Champion, 1910), p. 37.

³⁵ It may be, e.g., that Barbey's “Le Rideau cramoisi” was the source for the already mentioned episode in Le Journal d'une femme de chambre (Paris: Fasquelle, 1900), pp. 166–204, and of a similar adventure in a popular espionage novel by Jean Bruce, Les Espions du Piree (OSS 117) (Paris: Presses de la Cite, 1962), pp. 35–37. In the latter novel, Enrique tells that he once rendered nightly visits to the daughter of a deaf mother by passing through a bedroom window. One night, after “je me suis mis a lui faire des trues et des machins,” he discovers that she is dead, and “je me suis sauve” comme si j'avais eu le diable a mes trousses.“ Neither Mirbeau nor Bruce makes significant use of Barbey's creation; only the elements of plot are borrowed; the resonance of Barbey's tale is not exploited. Perhaps the story has value for itself alone in that it may excite a reader's interest; it may also help build an understanding of Enrique and, in Mirbeau, of Celestine. In these two cases, the recognition, however tentative, of the source, in no way helps to understand the novels; it does not lead to a deeper appreciation; nor, for that matter, does it help evaluate the two novels, if indeed there is any qualitative difference between them. Consequently, it seemsof little critical interest. It may, of course, be useful to those concerned with the creative processes of writers.

³⁶ “Les Sources d'inspiration du ‘Bateau ivre,‘ ” Mercure de France, 153 (1922), 104. Beraud is interesting because he actually says what many believe and because he goes on to advocate the investigation of affinities over sources. Such studies have proliferated as doubts have arisen about the validity of source hunting. Here again, however, serious problems arise, for all too often the statement of affinities fails to take into consideration whether and how authors have employed preceding or contemporary literature. W. D. Redfern's conclusion, after a careful comparison of Stendhal's Le Rouge et le noir and Camus's L'Etranger, provides a good example: “Both writers are linked by their Romantic premise that the good die young; that, if they lived longer, they might deteriorate. Both stories tell of a young man's error. But Julien's passions drive him to choose his own mistake. Meursault's mistake is almost made for him. Perhaps this is the main difference, in nature and in quality, between the unashamed and the embarrassed Romanticism of these two prisoner-heroes”—“The Prisoners of Stendhal and Camus,” FR, 41 (1968), 659. Certainly, one would not censure comparison for the sake of evaluation. On the other hand, one cannot but wonder at the validity of this judgment by a critic who has not recognized that L'Etranger alludes to Le Rouge et le noir, that Camus has used Stendhal's novel.

This is not the only time Camus was to allude to Stendhal. In La Chute, for another example, Jean-Baptiste Clamence's decisive experience on the bridge alludes to a similar episode that occurred in the life of Stendhal's Justin Louaut—“Philosophie transcendantale,” Melanges de litterature: Essais de psychologie, les mceurs, et la societe sur ses propres livres, ed. Henri Martineau, n (Paris: Le Divan, 1933), 271–77. Part of the significance resides in the fact that Louaut jumped in and saved the person, where Clamence, of course, did not.

³⁷ E.g., “Mais des auteurs comme ceux qui viennent d'etre cites [i.e., Giraudoux, Cocteau, Pierre Mille, et Jules Lemaitre] (et meme comme le Gide A'OIdipe et de Persephone) trahissent peut-etre, dans leur reprise de sujets cent fois traites, la faiblesse secrete de tant d'auteurs modernes: le manque de fougue imaginative, la crainte de puiser a meme la vie, souvent vulgaire, et brutale, et la preference pour la matiere deja epuree, sublimee et filtree par maint predecesseur”—Henri Peyre, L'Influence des litteratures antiques sur la litterature franqaise moderne: Etat des tra-vaux (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1941), pp. 80–81. For an example of vitally related divergences that have not been understood, there is C. Th. Dimaras' “Gide et la Grece,” Revue d'Athenes, No. 2 (April 1951), p. 42: “Dans [l]a premiere periode [de Gide], celle du symbo-lisme, la Grece ancienne passe et repasse; on dirait presque des souvenirs de college, enregistres par le genie. Plus tard il y est revenu, en puisant librement dans la litterature hellenique des sujets qu'il renouvelait sans trop se soucier de leur origine ou de leur sens profond. Je ne crois pas qu'il puisse etre question de la tradition de la Grece ancienne dans l'ceuvre d'Andre Gide.”

³⁸ “Mes Romans, mes films et mes cine-romans,” Magazine Litteraire, No. 6 (April 1967), p. 17.

³⁹ As Bruce Morrissette has suggested in Les Romans de Robbe-Grillet (Paris: Ed. de Minuit, 1963), pp. 52–75.