Editing Stendhal (section)

==Pseudonyms==
Before settling on the pen name Stendhal, he published under many [[pen name]]s, including "Louis Alexandre Bombet" and "Anastasius Serpière". The only book that Stendhal published under his own name was ''The History of Painting'' (1817). From the publication of ''Rome, Naples, Florence'' (September 1817) onwards, he published his works under the pseudonym "M. de Stendhal, officier de [[Cavalry|cavalerie]]". He borrowed this pen name from the German city of [[Stendal]], birthplace of [[Johann Joachim Winckelmann]], an art historian and archaeologist famous at the time. However, it is not clear whether he chose the name in honour of Winckelmann or simply knew the place as a centre of communications between Berlin and Hanover. Stendhal added an additional "H" to make the Germanic pronunciation more clear.<ref name=JR134>{{cite book| first= Joanna |last= Richardson |title= Stendhal| publisher= Coward, McCann & Geoghegan |year= 1974| page= 134}}</ref>

Stendhal used many aliases in his autobiographical writings and correspondence, and often assigned pseudonyms to friends, some of whom adopted the names for themselves. Stendhal used more than a hundred pseudonyms, which were astonishingly diverse. Some he used no more than once, while others he returned to throughout his life. "Dominique" and "Salviati" served as intimate pet names. He coins comic names "that make him even more bourgeois than he really is: Cotonnet, Bombet, Chamier."<ref name=JSAG>{{cite book |last=Starobinski |first=Jean |translator=Arthur Goldhammer |title=The Living Eye |publisher=Harvard University Press |date= 1989| chapter= Pseudononimous Stendhal |isbn=0-674-53664-9  }}</ref>{{rp|80}} He uses many ridiculous names: "Don phlegm", "[[Giorgio Vasari]]", "William Crocodile", "Poverino", "Baron de Cutendre". One of his correspondents, [[Prosper Mérimée]], said: "He never wrote a letter without signing a false name."<ref>{{cite book| first= Mariella |last= Di Maio |section= Preface |title= Aux âmes sensibles, Lettres choisies| publisher= Gallimard |year= 2011| page= 19}}</ref>

Stendhal's ''Journal'' and autobiographical writings include many comments on masks and the pleasures of "feeling alive in many versions." "Look upon life as a masked ball," is the advice that Stendhal gives himself in his diary for 1814.<ref name=JSAG />{{rp|85}} In ''Memoirs of an Egotist'' he writes: "Will I be believed if I say I'd wear a mask with pleasure and be delighted to change my name?...for me the supreme happiness would be to change into a lanky, blonde German and to walk about like that in Paris."<ref>{{cite book |last=Stendhal |translator-first=David |translator-last=Ellis |title=Memoirs of an Egotist |publisher=Horizon |date=1975 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/memoirsofegotist00sten/page/63 63] |chapter=Chapter V |isbn=9780818002243 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/memoirsofegotist00sten/page/63 }}</ref>