“The Life of Henry Brulard” by Stendhal: Beyle (b. 1783), writing as Stendhal, writes autobiography of Brulard (b. 1786), an alternate personality.

I have just read Chapter 1 of this autobiography, in which the narrator mentions three names: Marie-Henry Beyle (the author’s legal name), M. de Stendhal (Beyle’s most famous pseudonym), and Henry Brulard (the pseudonym used in the title).

The narrator does not explain the purpose of either of the two pseudonyms. And in fact, Brulard, as I am about to explain, may not be a pseudonym, but an alternate personality, strictly speaking.

Brulard may not be a pseudonym in the ordinary sense, because Beyle and Brulard have different birthdays, as though they were different persons. On page 1, the narrator gives his year of birth as 1783, which corresponds to the year that Marie-Henri Beyle was born, but a footnote on page 4 says that Brulard was born in 1786.

Thus, Henry Brulard is three years younger than Marie-Henri Beyle, which may mean that Brulard is not a pseudonym for Beyle, but the name of an alternate personality who came into existence when Beyle was three years old.

I see that at the beginning of Chapter 2, the first-person narrator reiterates that he was born in 1783. The footnote about Brulard in Chapter 1 had been in the third person. The first-person narrator, who talks of himself as a writer, must be Stendhal. It is not yet clear to me how Brulard fits in to the narrative. And I don’t know what the first-person narrator means at the end of Chapter 1, where he refers to himself as “madmen of my sort” (1, p. 8).

1. Stendhal. The Life of Henry Brulard [1835-36]. Translated by Jean Stewart and B. C. J. G. Knight. New York, Noonday Press, 1958.