MARIE-HENRI BEYLE
(Stendhal)
Note that to many in 19th century France, politics was considered crude and unrefined—especially to the well-educated and cultured. It is not very different in modern times in America and many other countries. Politicians, sensing the disdain that some intellectuals have of politics, often react by denigrating and attacking intellectuals and dismissing their views and expertise in science and other fields.
Marie-Henri Beyle, better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Best known for the novels Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black, 1830) and La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma, 1839), he is highly regarded for the acute analysis of his characters' psychology and considered one of the early and foremost practitioners of realism. A self-proclaimed egotist, he coined the same characteristic in his characters' "Beylism".
