A corupt system of so-called justice in The Charterhouse of Parma

The final third (or maybe second half) of Stendahl's The Charterhouse of Parma (1839) begins w/ the arest of Fabrizio and his imprisonment in the Farnese Tower, a huge and frightening prison complex run by the Prince of Parma. Stendahl's description of the tower is so precise and so strange that it sent me searching for an image of the tower - though I was not really surprised to learn that the tower exists only in Stendahl's novel. The other thing that doesn't exist, even in the novel, is even the slightest hint of a system of justice. The Prince has his minions arrest Fabrizio on a charge of murder, and in fact he did kill a man - an actor in a traveling troupe who suspected, correctly, that Fabrizio was after his girlfriend/mistress. In Stendahl's account of the confrontation between the two men, it's clear that Fabrizio acted in self-defense, but of course even w/ witnesses there's no solid way to prove this. And nobody's interested in proof. (There's also the pervading sense that Fabrizio's crime isn't all that serious because he's of a much higher social rank than the itinerant actor whom he killed - all lives are note created equal in Parma.) The Prince wants Fabrizio out of the way, and Fabrizio is caught between two rival factions serving in the government - Judge Rassi, if I remember the name correctly, and Count Mosco, the Prime minister. In all the flurry around Fabrizio's arrest there is much discussion about betrayal, about failure to carry out the Prince's orders, about illicit changes in the order, all of which is extremely difficult to follow - but what it clear throughout is that Fabrizio's fate has nothing to do w/ his own guilt of innocence regarding the murder charge - it's only about which faction will rise to power or retain its power, about what bribes can be offered, what chits cashed in, and what favors provided - power politics in its crudest form. It's a really grotesque world, despite its beauty, wealth, and society - and how different, really, from many political cultures around the world (and in our midst) today? 



To order a copy of "25 Posts from Elliot's Reading: Selections from the first 2,500 blog entries," click here.