De l'amour

On Love is Stendhal's study of romantic passion, written after an unhappy attachment in Italy. Part essay, part notebook, it describes love as a process with distinct stages, most famously a mental act he calls crystallization, in which the lover adorns the beloved with imagined perfections. He also compares attitudes to love across nations and ages, and discusses marriage and the education of women, which he thought unjustly neglected. The tone is curious and personal rather than systematic. It remains an early and influential attempt to examine feeling with close, almost scientific observation.