ABSTRACT
In the early part of 1818 Stendhal fell in love. He had met the Milanese Mathilde Viscontini Dembowski, who in her beauty, sensibilities and strength of character epitomized his ideal heroine. The crystallization process in love is an interpretative one in which the idealization of the object of desire transforms aspects of recalled physical beauty into expressions of virtue and worth. Friedrich Nietzsche's enthusiasm would have delighted Stendhal, who urged the guardians of Germanic culture to attempt a fresh, critical analysis of themselves and their conceptions of love and music. The relationship of sensual stimulus and creative idealization that lies at the heart of crystallization also forms a vital aspect of Stendhal's love of music. Stendhal's love of listening to Rossini is based on the corporeal excitement it generates and he wants his subsequent reflections, those divinations of Romantic passions, to retain, if not a physical trace of that bodily reaction, then at least the legacy of the experience.
