Love

'Stendhal always considered this his principal work, ' wrote Henri Martineau, 'because in it he had expressed his most cherished ideas, his most imtimate beliefs, all that science of happiness to which he attached so much importance, above all because he had enclosed in it his most painful secrets about love.' Stendhal's obsession with Mathilde Viscontini Dembowski is at the heart of this book. For her part, she neither returned his love nor understod him. In an attempt to explain his feelings to her - and to exorcise his love - he dissects his passion. Bringing together the conflicting ideas of his nature, the deeply emotional and the coolly analytical, Stendhal constructed a work that is both acutely personal and universally applicable.