The Incomprehensible Boredom of Julien Sorel, or On the relevance of realism for today

Abstract

The essay at hand aims to both understand and draw some implications from a somewhat enigmatic choice made by Auerbach in the chapter of Mimesis on the French Realists: in order to discuss the key role played by Stendhal in the consolidation of the “middle” or “intermediate style”, Auerbach chooses a minor scene from The Red and The Black, with the boredom felt by Julien Sorel being then characterized by the critic as “almost incomprehensible without a most accurate and detailed knowledge of the political situation, the social stratification, and the economic circumstances of a perfectly definite historical moment, namely, that in which France found itself just before the July Revolution” (AUERBACH, 2003, p. 455). It is precisely with this alleged incomprehensibility that this essay attempts to deal: first, by presenting a generic meaning for the scene that does not rely on the knowledge assumed as a pre-requisite by Auerbach, mainly following Franco Moretti’s book on the Bilgungsroman; then, supported by a recent essay by Jacques Rancière on Auerbach, in which the philosopher also dwells on the reasons for Auerbach’s curious choice; finally, based on the conception of realism developed by Fredric Jameson in The Antinomies of Realism, the essay attempts to suggest an idea of realism that pretends to be relevant for present times, and which bypasses Ian Watt’s rhetoric of “Formal Realism”.